


The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

by BetteNoire (WeAreWolves)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Boxer!Bucky, M/M, Shrunkyclunks, UFC, cap!steve - Freeform, modern!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2019-08-19 04:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: “Holy shit,” says Steve. “I’ve been knocked out twice by the same guy.”





	1. Chapter 1

Steve was prepared to hate what he’d been mentally referring to as Enforced Socialization Time, but the bar Clint and Sam drag him to in Brooklyn is surprisingly… all right. Crowded enough that nobody pays attention to him, but not so crowded he feels hemmed in. The place had obviously been a drinking establishment even back in Steve’s day, and the current owners had renovated it and modernized it without losing some of the aspects that made Steve feel comfortable: the big curved windows, the old wooden bar with its zinc top, the small decorative tiles set at the entrance. Plus, both the lights and the music are low enough to be enjoyable.

The bar is mostly a beer place: twenty taps of small, local brews, the names and ABVs listed on pressboards above the bar area. It’s Steve’s round, so he’s blinking up at the names and wondering if he should go back and ask Sam what a “Gose” is or just order it and find out, when he hears raised voices from the end of the bar. Well, he hears the word “fag” used in anger, and the round? It’s just going to have to wait.

He shoulders his way through the gathering crowd to see a guy getting shoved by three other, big guys. He can’t see anything about the victim other than he’s in the standard New York autumn uniform of a leather jacket over a hoodie and, as the man stumbles backwards, his jeans hug his ass and thighs in amazing ways. (Steve is grateful for many things the future has brought, but stretch denim is definitely top five. Maybe top three.)

The biggest assailant, who is about seven feet tall and almost as broad and has the flattened nose and cauliflower ears of a man who’s well acquainted with fighting, advances on Leather Jacket Guy, hissing insults. Another one cracks his knuckles, grinning. All Steve catches over the ambient noise of the bar is “fairy” and “can’t fight” and then even before his conscious mind can make a decision about it, he’s pushing in between them.

Unfortunately, Leather Jacket Guy has thrown one hell of a punch, and Steve puts his face right in front of it.

The last thought that crosses Steve’s mind as his head hits the floor is that Leather Jacket Guy is really gorgeous.

* * *

Lay low. That was the one rule. Don’t do anything to attract attention.

Well, Bucky thinks, as he looks down at the big blond guy unconscious on the floor, so much for that. Of course, if Cain “Juggernaut” Marko and his goons had just left him the fuck alone the way they’re supposed to… Bucky balls his fists again and raises his eyes, because one more word out of Juggernaut and so help him Jesus he is going to drop-kick him through the window—

“Holy shit!” Squeaks a voice from behind him. “One! Punch!”

Bucky looks over his shoulder, and there’s a handsome black guy pointing in shock as he giggles at the supine form of the big blond on the ground, while his rumpled-looking white friend stares at Bucky like he’s grown two heads.

“What,” Bucky grunts.

“Dude,” the white guy says. “You just knocked out Captain America!”

* * *

“And then he blushed, mumbled _oh shit_ , and ran away,” Clint says.

“Who is this person? We need to find him, so I can make him my new best friend,” Tony says, sitting on the edge of his seat, hands quivering excitedly near his face. “Natasha?”

“I’m glad you’re all taking such delight in my misfortune,” Steve says, rubbing his jaw, but then he looks at Natasha too.

“So, let me get this straight. You want me to find a hot gay gym rat in a leather jacket, hoodie, and good jeans,” Natasha says, her voice as dry as the Gobi Desert.

“He had dark hair? Kind of long,” Steve says.

“Ah, that makes it so much easier.”

Steve‘s face brightens in hope.

“I’m joking,” Natasha grumbles. The smile falls off Steve’s face. “Look, you’ve just described half of Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, and a fair portion of Williamsburg. Try Grindr, Steve. I’m not Grindr.”

“Did he really break your jaw?” Tony asks, completely failing to keep the glee out of his voice.

* * *

“That was not laying low, Barnes,” Coach Cage sighs when Bucky drags himself into the gym the next morning.

“I know,” Bucky groans. He raises his hands in surrender. “But that’s my neighborhood bar. I’ve been going there since I came back. It’s mine. Not my fault Marko and his lads, and a couple of Avengers all thought it was slum night.”

“You could leave next time,” Cage says. “You know, instead of trying to solve the problem with your fists.”

“You just leave when people call you slurs?” Bucky shoots back, pulling off his sweatshirt.

“Run up the Westside to the Little Red Lighthouse and back,” Cage orders. “20 seconds sprint, 40 seconds jog, the whole way. We’ll spar when you get back.”

“Auugh,” Bucky moans. “I hate you.”

“Oh, and wear a 40lb weight vest.”

“This is cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Get it through your thick Irish skull, Barnes,” his coach says, smacking the bench with the flat of his hand for emphasis. “No fighting except in the Octagon.”

* * *

“So Steve’s little two-fisted crush gave me an idea for the next Avengers fundraiser, seeing as you all complain about the galas,” Tony says.

“I like the galas,” Natasha says.

Tony flaps a hand at her. “Hear me out. You get to beat up more boys this way.”

Natasha perks up, straightening in her seat. “I’m all ears,” she purrs.

Tony looks around at the Avengers gathered at his table for Pizza Night. Everyone is mostly paying attention, except Steve, who is gazing out the window, his mind clearly miles away. Or decades. You can never tell with Spangles.

Tony snaps his fingers. “Steve! Steve, you’re part of this plan.”

Steve turns to him and arranges his features into a pretense of interest.

Tony sighs, slumping back in his chair. “Look, Pep tells me there’s something the proles watch called UFC+, it’s basically Nonhuman Fight Club. They all wear costumes, but it’s real fighting, not scripted like wrestling.”

“Wrestling is scripted?” Clint says around a slice of pepperoni. Natasha swats him up the back of the head.

“Anyway, it’s a big deal. Lots of fans. So I thought we do a charity fight of Avengers vs the UFC+ champions—“

“I don’t think the Other Guy should really be encouraged—“ Bruce begins.

“—No!” Tony says. “There’s this guy called Juggernaut, and in the right arena—“

“How do I play into this?” Steve says.

“You’re our ringer,” Tony smiles. “You’re going to publicize this whole thing. We’re going to set up a fight between you and whoever is the champ in your weight class, but you’ll be in a mask, just a normal challenger, until you beat the guy and take off your mask and voila, Captain America.”

“Tony, I could really hurt someone,” Steve says, looking down at his hands.

* * *

Steve’s opponent has a black mask and a metal arm and jarringly soulful grey eyes and that more than anything else makes Steve decide to go easy on him, a decision that lasts precisely 0.5 seconds because the guy moves like lightning and hits like a freight train and then Steve is staring up at the pretty sparkly lights in the ceiling and somebody near him is counting.

* * *

“Well. That was… _quick_ ,” Sam says, as they sit outside the arena’s backstage entrance, taking in the cool night air. “At least we got you out of there before they took your mask off.”

“Nnh,” says Steve, pressing the bag of ice to the spot on his temple where the metal fist had connected.

“Were you pulling your punches? You were pulling your punches! What part of _enhanced_ didn’t you get? The little plus at the end of UFC+ means _more_ _than_ _human_. They put you up against a cyborg and you pull your punches?” Tony’s voice rises incredulously.

“Mm,” Steve grunts. He moves the ice down to his jaw. “He had nice eyes. Not a fighter’s eyes.”

“That’s just about the only thing he has. I can’t find a real name, birthdate, photo, anything. Even running his fight pics through Jarvis won’t get me a match,” Natasha says, stabbing angrily at her phone screen. “The warpaint around his eyes and on his ears throws off facial recognition.”

“Dude. _Shady_ ,” Clint says. “I like him.”

“Oh well. I guess that’s it for the fight fundraiser,” says Bruce.

“So there’s nothing on this guy other than he’s called The Winter Soldier?” Tony asks.

Natasha shakes her head. “I’m almost in awe of how complete the scrub is. I don’t know whether I want to hunt him down and interrogate him, or be his friend.” She looks up, her eyes bright. “Tony. His arm.”

Tony sighs, spreading his arms out in a gesture of supplication to the heavens. “At a guess? That’s alien tech. Not mine, not any of my competitors’.”

Someone comes out of the backstage door then. Steve looks up to see a guy quickwalk past with his head down, sweatshirt hood up and a leather jacket, his hands balled into the pockets of baggy grey sweats, dirty white Adidas on his feet. The guy is silent, and somehow familiar, and he’s throwing one leg over a Triumph road bike when the penny drops for Steve.

He stands up so fast he’s dizzy. “Hey!” He yells.

The man looks back, a flash of panicked grey eyes and dark hair visible under the faded navy hood.

“Wait—“

But Steve’s words are drowned out by the roar of the bike as it peels away.

Steve slides back down the wall. “Fuck,” he groans.

Natasha looks at him, her face full of questions.

“I’ve been knocked out twice by the same guy,” Steve says.

* * *

The plate on the bike is registered to a dingy Hells Kitchen boxing gym and as Steve walks through its doors he doesn’t know why he feels so nervous, but he does. He hasn’t even seen this guy’s face properly, but meeting him — talking to him — is the only thing Steve can think about in the days following the fight.

The gym is empty when Steve goes in, except for a large black man in a yellow t-shirt with the word COACH across the front in big white letters. He’s doing paperwork at a battered desk in a corner. Steve had deliberately picked a time when most gyms were usually dead: 3pm on a Friday. Not that the place likely gets a lot of street traffic, way out on 11th Avenue on the third floor of an unmarked industrial building. The pale light from the Hudson filters in through tall, dirty windows, illuminating dust motes and brightening patches of the red and blue mats on the floor.

“I help you?” The man says, getting slowly to his feet. His eyes flick over Steve once, then again. “Not sure I got much to teach Captain America about fighting.”

Steve smiles and walks over to a heavy bag, which he notices is hanging from considerably stronger chains than standard. “I dunno,” he says. “Got knocked out a few times recently, and I’m feeling a little… chastened.” Steve pushes at the heavy bag, then throws an experimental jab at it. It’s like punching a lightly padded brick wall. He raises an eyebrow at the black man. “Impressive. Not sure even I could wreck this bag.”

“Yeah, well, we get all kinds here,” the coach says.

“Mm,” Steve says. “I have trouble finding sparring partners.”

“That so,” the coach says, crossing his arms.

Steve shakes his head, smiling through his nerves. “You know, most people are a little more enthusiastic when Captain America walks into their establishment.”

“Brother, I have absolutely zero interest in coaching Captain America,” the man says, sitting back down at his desk. He taps the stained wooden surface with the end of a pen. “Now, Steve Rogers, I might be willing to see how that goes. But Captain America? He can get the hell out and let me go back to my invoicing.”

Steve pulls off his ball cap and sticks it in his back pocket, then smooths his hair before walking over and extending a hand to the black man. “Steve Rogers. Nice to meet you.”

The man reaches out and takes Steve’s hand, his grip dry and firm. “Luke Cage. You’ll come twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, at this time. You won’t be sparring until I think you’re ready, and the more you bitch about it, the longer it’ll take for me to decide you’re ready.”

* * *

“Got a new guy I need you to spar with,” Cage says, as Bucky makes a face at the pressure of holding a front lever on the gymnastic rings.

Cage’s timer goes off and Bucky lowers himself down, wincing. “Do I have to be easy on him?”

“Nope,” Cage grins.

* * *

Steve is hopped up on adrenalin and nerves, unable to stand still despite the punishing sprint run Cage had ordered he do as a so-called warm-up. He feels young again, and alive, and like he has to prove himself to these people. It’s exciting.

Cage holds out a glove, and Steve fits his hand into it then turns his wrist to let Cage lace it up. “Now, don’t let the kid fool you,” Cage says. “You can’t hurt him. In fact if you land anything on him I’ll be shocked. He will absolutely wipe the floor with you if you give him half a chance.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Uh, why would he fool me?”

“You’ll see.” Cage thumps him on the shoulder. “Kid was just like you when he first started coming here. Thought he could end every fight with one punch and so lagged hard on his other side.”

“And now?” Steve says.

Cage smirks. “You’ll see.” He holds the mouthguard out for Steve. There’s still nobody else in the gym except for the two of them.

As Steve looks around pointedly, the door of the gym bangs open behind him and someone comes in, swearing a blue streak in a broad Irish accent.

That someone hops neatly over the ropes of the sparring ring, shucks off a navy-blue hoodie and a pair of baggy grey sweats, pulls his hair back in a ponytail while simultaneously toeing out of his sneakers, then finally turns around and looks up at Steve.

“Hi, I’m Bucky,” the man mumbles. “Sorry I’m late.”

Steve is too busy trying to look everywhere at once to formulate any sort of coherent response. There are those eyes, which are the eyes of a poet or an artist, not a fighter, but then there’s the silver arm too, intricate scales of alien manufacture shifting silently as he moves, and then there’s the fact that the kid — Bucky — is in nothing but a pair of tight, shiny red booty shorts that emphasize that he is clearly a man who never skips Leg Day. The coach calls him “kid”, but Steve reckons Bucky is, biologically, late 20s, like him. About the same height, too, and possibly even more built, despite seeming slim in his clothes.

Steve is still gawking over the amount of muscle on display — seriously, where does the kid keep it all, under those baggy sweats — when Bucky taps his gloves together and bounces on the balls of his bare feet, saying “Ready.”

“Uh, it’s okay if you need a sec to collect yourself,” Steve says.

Bucky shakes his head no, and Coach Cage yells out “Don’t go easy on him, Rogers, he’s not gonna go easy on you.”

Then there’s the sharp ring of the bell, and Bucky is already moving. Steve’s not a mobile fighter. He’s never had to be. He just plants himself there like an oak, sets his shield, and waits for people to come to him. But Bucky is prowling around him, forcing him to move, pushing him to make a mistake. And he has no shield to help him here.

The kid ducks in, and Steve knows it’s a feint, but it puts the kid’s head in range and Steve snaps out a fast right cross and doesn’t follow through with his left, his shield arm, because he’s already worried about taking the kid’s head off with that right and—

—a cold, numb pain explodes from his stomach, like he’s been hit by a bag of bricks, and he glances down right into the uppercut that’s chasing it and that’s no fun, and there’s a split second where he thinks okay, not a great start, but he can just stagger back onto the ropes and come back, and then there’s that jab again, higher now, right in his solar plexus and he goes over backwards like a chopped tree.

The bell rings.

Steve hears the quiet tread of Coach Cage’s footsteps, then the creak of the ropes as the man leans on them. If he doesn’t open his eyes, he doesn’t have to see the disappointed expression on Cage’s face. So he keeps them shut.

“So, Rogers, that’s what happens when you lag on your left with someone who knows what they’re doing,” Cage says.

“Can you teach me that combo?” Steve says.

“Maybe. I think that one’s a Bucky special. The kid doesn’t move like anyone else, so you shouldn’t feel too bad about eating canvas.”

Steve just grunts and sits up. He finally opens his eyes. The kid isn’t looking at him. He’s just retreated to his corner and is fiddling with the lacing on his gloves. Steve has a view of a truly glorious backside, and it takes him a moment to realise what’s wrong with it.

The kid hasn’t even broken a sweat, and that more than anything else gets Steve mad.

“I want to go again,” Steve says.

“Oh, we aren’t anywhere near done,” Cage smiles. “What’s going to happen now is you’re going to go six rounds just dodging the kid’s punches. You can’t hit back. Just block ‘em or dodge ‘em. I wouldn’t recommend blocking anything with his left, seeing as one time I watched him punch through a brick wall with it.”

“Jagermeister is a very bad alcohol and I have many regrets,” the kid mutters. Then he glances over at his coach. “Do I have to wear gloves this time?”

Cage smiles at him, warmly. “Nah, kid. I know you hate ‘em.” He pulls up a stool and makes himself comfortable ringside. “But just classical boxing for now. None of your other stuff.”

Bucky huffs like a racehorse that’s been told he can’t go above a trot, and stalks back to his corner. The gloves hit the floor and are booted off the canvas.

Then he turns to Steve and raises an eyebrow.

Steve nods.

The bell rings.

Bucky saunters out to Steve like he’s got all day. Then, slowly, he pulls the same combo that knocked Steve down the previous round.

Steve dodges it easily this time, spins around the low jab, weaves past the uppercut, and ducks under the second jab.

Bucky gives him a small smile, then speeds up the combo.

Steve is so distracted by the smile that he doesn’t quite get below the second jab.

“I’m not gonna go full speed this round,” Bucky calls over to Cage.

Cage just shrugs.

By the end of Round Three, Steve is dripping with sweat, but he’s only been punched a couple of times and it feels like victory, especially as Bucky had increased the speed of his punches with each new round. He slams back half a liter of water and is feeling pretty good about himself as the bell for Round Four goes.

“Okay,” Bucky says, pushing off from his corner and looking at him with his ridiculously gorgeous, doe-eyed face. “I’m gonna go full speed now, you okay with that?”

 _Fuck_ , Steve thinks, as he nods and puts up his guard.

Any doubts Steve has about how enhanced the kid is are put to rest when Bucky unleashes the first lightning-fast combo on him. Steve is on the run for the entire round, barely keeping himself from being wrongfooted or from getting too off balance. The whole time, Steve’s tactical mind is working on how he’d strike back if he could, but that’s the thing: the kid isn’t leaving openings. He’s never off balance, never overextending. It’s like fighting a machine. A machine that learns that Steve’s first instinct is to duck right, and throws a feint at him, and then a punch directly into the space he’s most likely to move into.

Steve hasn’t had to work this hard for this long in a practice, ever, and he’s not sure whether it’s the best thing that’s happened to him or the worst. He survives the final rounds mostly out of sheer spite, but as the bell on Round Six goes, he’s pleased to note the kid is sweating too.

Steve tosses him a towel and is rewarded by a huge, sunny smile of delight as the kid catches it and wipes his brow.

“You did good, Rogers,” Cage says.

“Yeah, you did,” Bucky adds softly, as he leans against the ropes in one of the sunbeams filtering in front the setting sun. He’s bathed in gold, a sweaty, beautiful enigma.

Steve feels warmth blossom in his chest which is totally unrelated to the number of hard punches Bucky landed on his torso.

“Once you two catch your breath, we’ll do a warm-down,” Cage says. “Just two rounds. Rogers, you attack, Bucky defends. You land a solid punch on the kid, Rogers, and we’ll take you out for burgers.” Bucky is about to say something, but Cage rolls his eyes preemptively. “Yeah, kid, do your funky stuff.”

Bucky’s _funky_ _stuff_ is apparently a Natasha-like ability to spin and backflip away from trouble, and Steve suddenly understands why the guy’s thighs are so thick as Bucky dodges an uppercut by somersaulting over it. In midair, he gently tugs Steve’s wrist to suggest how the complete defensive maneuver would end: by using Steve’s own momentum to throw him onto his back.

And suddenly, Steve realises he’s having fun. A short laugh barks out of him, he’s so caught with the sheer unexpectedness of it. They punch and duck and weave and flip almost faster than the unenhanced eye can track, both of them grinning with the joy of being alive, and Bucky twists away from what Steve thought was a perfect punch and there’s a split-second opening and before he can second-guess it he snakes a fist out and Bucky mostly eels around the blow but Steve’s knuckles graze his side and Bucky makes the funniest surprise face and then Steve just yells “fuck it” and jumps on Bucky and tackles him to the ground and they’re both laughing their heads off and Steve is just kneeling over him and shaking him by the shoulders and saying “how?!” And Bucky’s blushing and shaking his head and his hair has come out of his ponytail and he’s laughing too hard to answer and in the background the coach is ringing the bell and telling them they’re both children and this is a boxing gym and not a goddamn kindergarten and Bucky looks up at him and says “do you want a burger?” And Steve says, “I want about five burgers,” and Steve realises he has to roll off Bucky now before he does something stupid like kiss that smile right off him.

* * *

Looking at Steve Rogers is like looking at the sun. Bucky has to keep his gaze averted, on the onion rings in front of him at the diner, on his own hands as he fiddles with the frayed cuffs of his favourite hoodie. This was a mistake.

It’s especially a mistake because Steve Rogers asks _way_ too many questions. _Where are you from? Who gave you the arm? How did you get into pro fighting? Have you ever thought of being an Avenger?_

The military instinct in Bucky makes him want to sit up and answer, like the obedient beast he used to be. Even after everything, there’s part of him that just wants a direct order to follow, and even worse, that part of him feels grateful for it, and he bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds because hell no, never again.

So when Steve asks him _Where did you learn to fight like that_ , Bucky just slumps down into his booth seat and mumbles, _Nowhere good_.

Steve withdraws into himself at that, with a quiet “oh” and an impressive attempt to bring his big shoulders up to his ears.

And now Bucky feels like a jerk. He talks to Coach Cage, and his liason at the Agency, but neither of them are really his friends. He doesn’t have friends, not since he came back, and he doesn’t remember the ones he had before he left. Conversation is… something other people do. He watches it, sometimes, people chatting away about meaningless things, and his lips can make the words but he doesn’t know what order to put them in, or which ones to use.

But Steve Rogers is despondently mashing a fry into some ketchup like Bucky’s inability to be a person is somehow his fault, and that’s… not right.

“I, uh… thank you for trying to stop that bar fight the other night. That was you, yeah?”

Steve smiles a little and stops persecuting that poor french fry. “Yeah, it was. They were calling you some names I don’t like to hear. Heard ‘em enough in my day. Future’s supposed to be better than that.”

Bucky snorts and wraps his hands around his iced tea. “Yeah, well, UFC+ has a lot of hypermasculine bullshit going on. Just because it’s bare-knuckle, some folks think that means they can drag their knuckles too. Those guys, Juggernaut and his bros, they decided I must be gay because I won’t go out partying with them.”

“You’re not gay, then?” Steve says, beginning to pulverize another fry.

“I’m bi, but that’s not why I won’t party with them,” Bucky says. “I won’t party with them because they’re douchebags. They don’t understand any motivation other than becoming big celebrities. _Influencers_.” Bucky takes a sip of his tea. “That’s not why I fight.”

“Why do you fight?” Steve asks.

Bucky sighs and leans back against the sticky red plastic cushion of the booth. “When I was a little kid I dreamed that I’d be chosen to fly a star fighter and be whisked away to become a rebel hero in a great intergalactic war, and that my actions could singlehandedly save the whole planet.”

“And?” Steve says.

Bucky closes his eyes. “You should be careful what you dream about.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tuesday morning, giant alien robot-spiders attack Cincinnati. Steve is angry about a number of things, not least the likelihood that he’s going to miss his session with Bucky at Cage’s boxing gym, so he cuts loose _hard_ on the spiders. After all, they’re only robots.

Or that’s what they think, until the edge of Steve’s shield cracks a thorax open, and they find… a twitching mass of muscle and what used to be skin, growing around and into the interior mechanics of the spider.

Any pity Steve might have for the twisted creatures is blown away by a ferocious blast of electric current from the wounded spider-thing that sends him flying backwards through the plate-glass window of a Chipotle’s. Steve feels like he’s down for an hour, but the reality is it’s probably nothing more than a few stomach-twisting, rubbery moments before he comes to, sore and with the scent of singed hair and broken cement in his nostrils. They subdue the creatures and save downtown Cincinnati, but Steve can’t shake the nausea that hit him when he first saw the mangled beings plugged inside the gleaming, segmented spider-bots.

The rest of the Avengers don’t want to talk about it either. Even Tony saves his smart remarks as the Iron Man suit folds away like origami around him, and they file onto the Quinjet in silence. At least nobody was wounded, Steve thinks, as he checks his phone— 11am, he can still—

“Fury to Avengers. I need to pull you in for a briefing. Cancel your plans for the rest of the day.”

Steve swears audibly as he buckles in.

“Going to miss your barbershop quartet practice?” Natasha smirks as she flops into the seat next to him.

Steve flips her off.

Natasha glances down at her nails. Steve can tell out of the corner of his eye that her manicure’s a write-off. “Whole new Steve out there, not dropping his left,” she says, quieter, just for them.

“I took your advice,” he replies.

“Been giving you that advice for two years solid and then you start vanishing on Tuesdays and Fridays and suddenly you fight better. A girl could get curious.”

“The barbershop’s in a rough neighborhood,” Steve replies. He adds, off her raised eyebrow, “Where we practice. Our quartet.”

Sam snorts a laugh.

“Mm-hmm,” Natasha says, but she doesn’t press him. She just turns her head to watch Pennsylvania pass by out the window.

Steve glances down at his phone and shoots off a quick message to Coach Cage, cancelling his session. He’d text Bucky too, but apparently Bucky doesn’t have a cellphone. He’s suddenly, furiously, deeply resentful of both the alien robo-cyborgs in Ohio and Fury’s need to brief them straight after they drag in from an op.

It’s not the first session at the gym he’s had to miss because of Avengers work, but his skin had felt hot and too tight and he’d been restless all weekend, and he’d been looking forwards to the calm that sparring with Bucky brought him. He thought he might find it in combat, but instead it had just brought pain and unease.

Steve closes his eyes and thinks of the gym: the quiet rhythmic noises of bare feet on canvas, the way the dust motes spiral in the light from the old warehouse windows. Steve spars nearly every session with Bucky now, and it’s… so much, and nowhere near enough. Bucky is quiet, in the way of folks he knew in the war who had shell-shock, and strangely gentle outside the ring. Every shy smile of his, every blush, makes Steve feel like he’s finally accomplished something worthwhile.

Fury’s SHIELD assistants don’t even give them a chance to tidy up before they’re all hauled in to the briefing. Clint and Sam flat-out threaten to mutiny, until somehow Tony makes coffee and pain au chocolat appear for all of them.

Then Nick Fury strides into the room and something about his manner makes everyone lose their appetite. He’s already talking, even as the door is still closing behind him. “Good afternoon, Avengers, those cyborgs you just fought in Cincinnati are shock troops associated with the Skrull Empire.”

An image appears on the wall of tall, stooped gremlin-like bipeds, with fangs and almond-shaped eyes. “They’re bad news. Their mortal enemies are the Kree—“

Another image appears, of a startlingly humanoid biped. Not just humanoid, but… _familiar_. Steve’s favourite books as a child had been Tolkien’s Ring trilogy, and these creatures looked exactly like he always imagined the High Elves did: slim, elegant, aristocratic, with their pointed ears and their large, pale eyes. The alien is wearing beautiful, ornate silver armour, which only accentuates the likeness.

He clearly isn’t the only one to see the resemblance, given Clint’s startled stage-whisper of, “whoa, it’s Elrond” from further down the briefing table.

“Nerd,” Sam coughs into his hand.

“—don’t think they’re any better than the Skrulls just because they’re pretty. They’re worse. They pioneered the sort of cruel, non-consensual bio-modification you saw in those spiders today.”

The two images disappear, and a map of the galaxy spreads out across the entire wall, stars and nebulae glimmering. It’s incredibly realistic, and Steve has to suppress a gasp. “The Kree and Skrull Empires are the two dominant powers in our part of the galaxy. They’ve already fought two bloody wars against each other. We believe they’re headed towards a third.”

“And you think their war will impact us,” Steve says, as parts of the star map begin to glow green and red to show territory.

Fury begins to speak, then sighs, spreading his hands and leaning on the table. “I need you all to listen to what I’m about to say, very carefully. If you only ever do one thing I say ever again, let it be this: do not engage any Kree or Skrull you see on Earth, and do not let any civilians engage them. If you have to, protect the aliens with your lives.”

“…what,” Tony says, his face pinched in annoyance and confusion.

“Both the Kree and Skrulls are very, very old cultures,” Fury continues, exhaustion apparent in his voice. “Their civilisations exist by a system of protocols so complex, so Byzantine, they’re almost impossible for outsiders to parse.”

“Gormenghast,” Natasha says, leaning forwards in her seat. She flashes a smile at Steve. “I was always more of a Peake girl.”

“Gormenghast,” Fury nods. “Exactly.” He gestures at the star map again. “They no longer undertake their wars themselves. They fight each other by proxy, using the slave soldiers of vassal planets. Easier to capture what they view as lesser civilisations and sacrifice them, than risk their own people.”

“So if we raise arms against them…” Steve begins.

“…They consider it as a statement of war and Earth will be theirs within the day. And then God help every being on this planet.”

“They’re taunting us, then,” Tony says. “With those spiders. Getting us on a hair trigger with anything alien.”

Fury nods. “There will be more. Stay close, and stay ready.”

“But what do we do when the Kree or Skrulls finally show up? How do we get them to leave Earth alone, _permanently_?” Steve asks.

“We have an asset in place for that,” Fury says.

Steve has dozens more questions but before he can get the first one out, Fury turns, his black trenchcoat billowing as he shows them his back. “Avengers dismissed,” Fury says as he strides out the door. “Go clean up. You all look like hell.”

* * *

Friday morning it’s a giant space slug crash-landing on Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and Steve holds the Avengers back until he can see that the troops surrounding it are neither Kree nor Skrull, just furry little mustard-yellow critters straight out of a Dr Seuss book, with odd metallic helmets and deadened eyes.

The slug dies, the furry yellow creatures are rounded up and taken prisoner by SHIELD, and Steve makes it to Hells Kitchen by 3pm. He’s still in his Captain America suit, and there might be some space-slug viscera on him, but he’s there.

Coach Cage raises an eyebrow at Steve’s uniform as he walks in, but Steve barely notices because Bucky is doing something complicated on the gymnastic rings that’s making every muscle on his arms and chest stand out.

Bucky’s metal arm recalibrates, and Steve sees silver glint under the skin around his shoulder. And Steve realises: the arm is _alive_. It’s not a prosthetic. There are no scars around it, no signs of attachment. It just…grows out of him. It’s somehow as living as the rest of him, but metal. And… it’s _beautiful_.

Cage whacks him up the back of the head. Steve averts his eyes, realising he’s been staring longer than is polite.

“Don’t ask him,” Cage says, his voice low. “If he wants to tell you, he’ll eventually tell you. But don’t hold your breath.”

“Of course not,” Steve says. “I wouldn’t…”

Cage grunts. “You gonna spar in that?” He asks gesturing to Steve’s uniform.

“I can change,” Steve says, then he realises. “Uh, I don’t have anything to change into.”

Behind him, Steve can hear the soft brush of bare feet on the floor. Bucky’s come down off the rings, then. Steve doesn’t turn. It takes everything for him not turn to Bucky, like a sunflower chasing the sun, but he manages.

Then there’s the hard klank of metal knuckles on metal shield. “We playing with this today?” Bucky asks.

Steve hadn’t considered that.

He unslings the shield from his back and turns it over in his hands, looking down at its bright, domed surface. He doesn’t practice with it enough, if he‘s being honest with himself. There was always the worry that someone would get hurt. Besides, other than playing keep-away, there wasn’t much anyone could do against the shield—

“Not down here. Go upstairs. Less for you two hooligans to break up there,” Cage says.

And Bucky reaches forwards with a shy smile and tugs Steve’s elbow, leading him towards the fire stairs.

“We don’t have to—“ Steve begins, going to put the shield aside.

“I _want_ to,” says Bucky, leaning against the metal door, holding it open with his body. He’s wearing silver booty shorts today, with a red stripe on the sides.

And that’s all it takes to get Steve trailing along after the young boxer, up the stairs and to a floor that’s mostly bare, empty warehouse, but for what looks like a pile of blankets in one corner, a couple dog-eared paperbacks, and a stack of large, sleek metal hardcases, each with a fancy digital lock. The last time Steve had seen cases like them, there were smuggled nuclear warheads inside.  
  
Their presence disturbs him. Cases like that only ever contain trouble. He resolves to ask Bucky about them later. But for right now, Bucky’s walked about halfway across the floor from him, and stands, loose and waiting on the balls of his feet, in a patch of sun from the big windows.

“Say when,” Bucky says.

Steve slides his shield onto his arm, shifts his weight forwards, and nods.

“When,” he says.

Bucky flows into a fast, silent run, straight at him, metal arm cocked back for a punch.

Steve throws the shield before he can even think about it, and then cringes inwardly as the disk spins straight at Bucky’s neck.

At the last moment, Bucky shifts, moves his metal hand forwards, and _catches the shield_. The momentum pushes his bare feet backwards on the dusty cement floor, but he catches it.

Steve feels a hot spike of lust burn its way down his body from his chest to his cock.

Then, smoothly, like he’s done it a thousand times before, Bucky throws the shield back at Steve.

Steve catches it, of course, because it’s _his damn shield_ and he’s not going to fumble it in front of a _sport fighter_ , even if he is in the middle of a crisis of realisation about what he wants from that sport fighter and it’s not friendship. Well, it _is_ friendship, but with a whole lot of additional horizontal and naked components that don’t normally come standard.

Steve barely gets his shield up in time to stop a full-strength punch from Bucky’s left arm. The noise of the blow rings out bold and clear off the exposed brick and cement of the space, and though the shield doesn’t vibrate, the sound waves do, and that does nothing to help his aroused state.

Steve shoves the shield, trying to throw Bucky off balance, but he just flips back and tangles Steve’s legs in his own. Steve topples, and he’s not entirely upset to fall onto Bucky…. Except Bucky rolls, ending up on top of Steve with one hand on his neck. Steve in return has the edge of the shield against Bucky’s neck. At least Bucky is breathing hard, Steve thinks. At least he had to expend some actual _effort_ to bring Steve down.

He spends a moment there, looking up at Bucky’s face, because he can. Then he grins. “Again?”

Bucky gets off him. “Yeah, again.” His eyes crinkle with happiness.

Steve paces away from Bucky, very grateful that his uniform is designed to keep certain parts of him both in place and protected. He knew he liked being around Bucky, found him fascinating — he reminds Steve of the illustrations in his tattered, childhood copy of _The Boy’s King Arthur_ — Percival, maybe, or Galahad — and any idiot with eyes could see Bucky was gorgeous. But he hadn’t expected the volcano of emotions he now had exploding within him.

Oh well. _Stands to reason_ , Steve thinks. Peggy had punched him, too.

“What are you thinking about?” Bucky asks, and Steve realises he’s been staring out into space for probably too long.

He smiles as he turns, and lifts the shield. “A little upset that throwing the shield at you is clearly a non-starter as a tactic.”

Bucky shrugs, and looks around at the brick support pillars that divide up the floor. “On the other hand, it means we’re less likely to trash my space.”

“…Your space?” Steve asks.

“Not _mine_ -mine,” Bucky says, glancing down and blushing. “But, uh…” he indicates the pile of fabric in the corner, that Steve had assumed were just discarded packing blankets. “I sleep there.”

Steve strides over and gapes at the blankets. It’s not a place fit for a human. Hell, Steve had seen Forgotten Men squatting under bridges and in Hoovervilles that had more pleasant set-ups. “Why?” He croaks out. Then he immediately regrets it when he sees the confusion and hurt on Bucky’s face. “I just mean… why do you live like this? You’re a successful fighter, aren’t you?” (Steve didn’t want to think what it meant if Bucky — who was closest to being able to take Steve down of almost anyone he’s ever fought — _wasn’t_ the top of his league.)

Bucky nods. “Yeah, I do okay.” His pale eyes still show no understanding.

“People don’t live like this!” Steve says, picking up a blanket. Damn it, it _is_ an old packing blanket, heavy grey with two blue stripes at each end. There are no _pillows_. 

“They… don’t?” Bucky says. He looks lost, cornered, and he backs away from Steve. “But… I’m happy. I like it here. _Please_.”

“Shit,” Steve says. “Buck, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with your space. I was just… surprised, is all. People today seem to need so much stuff.”

“I have stuff,” Bucky frowns, indicating the metal hardcases along the wall.

“Ugh, I’m doing so badly at this,” Steve groans, covering his face with his hands. “Can we go back to sparring? I’m only losing about half the time there.”

“God, yes,” Bucky groans back.

“Okay, c’mon, Barnes. I’m not going to fall for that leg thing again,” Steve says, crouching and setting his shield lower than usual.

So instead Bucky somersaults over the shield and wraps his thighs around Steve’s neck.

Steve gets him back the next time, throwing Bucky across the space and then using the shield as a battering ram to drive Bucky into one of the brick pillars.

Bucky keeps thinking up novel ways to get around the shield or turn it to his advantage, even as Steve learns to predict and counter the low attacks, the high attacks, and the feints. But every time, Bucky has to work harder to get past Steve’s defenses. It’s glorious, everything Steve loves best about hand-to-hand combat: a simultaneous tactical puzzle and physical challenge. And unlike most of his opponents, Bucky forces him to work his hardest in both areas.

They decide to call it a day after a slightly unfortunate shield-embedding incident. They’d both gotten silly and loose with exhaustion and Steve had tried to hit Bucky up the back of the head with a shield rebound off a pillar but… the shield hadn’t rebounded off the old brick. Just become stuck in it.

“Oops,” Steve giggles, while Bucky gapes at the shield.

Steve peels off his gloves, wipes the sweat from his brow, then yanks the shield out of the pillar. “I should get going,” he says.

“Yeah, no more destroying my bedroom,” Bucky says, then turns bright red. “I mean…”

Steve bumps his shoulder. “I know what you meant.”

Bucky gives Steve a once-over, eyes raking down the dirty, sweaty Captain America uniform. Steve can tell that Bucky’s thinking about saying something, chewing his lip in a nervous tell. “What is it?” Steve asks.

“Only… do you want something to change into? So you don’t have to go home in, in _that_?” Bucky says. Then he waves at the hardcases again. “Because I have… well, you’ve seen what my clothes look like. They’d probably fit you.”

If Steve’s being honest with himself, he was planning to call a car, but something within him leaps at the idea of being in Bucky’s clothes, of being surrounded by his scent. “I’d really appreciate that,” he says. “Thanks.”

He props the shield up against a wall and begins the process of stripping out of the harness and uniform while Bucky passes his metal hand across the locking mechanism of one of the hardcases. It chirps and flashes, and there’s the chunk-chunk-chunk of bolts being undone.

A dark red henley, a navy hoodie, and a pair of grey sweatpants hit the floor at Steve’s feet.

Steve throws his shield harness back on over his bare chest — the magnets on the back work through clothing, and it’s less conspicuous that way. “Don’t suppose you have a ball cap, too?” Steve says.

Bucky mumbles something and roots around in the case a moment longer. Then he pulls out a black ball cap and wiggles it as he turns around.

The hat falls to the ground as Bucky takes in Steve’s appearance: tight boxer briefs, and his leather harness straining across his bare chest.

“What…” is all Bucky manages, a look of dazed wonder on his face.

“It’s for the shield,” Steve says, hunching his shoulders, suddenly embarrassed. “I—“

But Bucky is already right in front of him, slipping a warm metal hand under the chest strap of the harness… and _lifting_. His silver eyes are bright, and a little wild.

Steve finds himself hoisted a foot off the ground, and _boy_ , it _does_ things for him. Bucky’s casual display of strength and… _ownership_. He can feel the blush moving down his face, feel how his nipples are pebbling. His breath starts coming short, and it has nothing to do with exertion and everything with being manhandled.

Then Bucky seems to come back to himself and tries to set Steve down. But Steve’s legs aren’t really working any more and Steve just allows himself to sink to his knees, looking up at Bucky, all too aware of how much he wants to run his hands along the waistband of those silver booty shorts and peel them down. Bucky stares back at him, transfixed, his metal hand still fisted around the shield harness. Steve weaves slightly, unsteady, wanting that hand to tug him forwards.

But instead of pulling Steve in, Bucky is suddenly backing away, his palms up, and Steve’s chest feels cold where that metal hand had been. “I’m so sorry… I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know what I’m doing,” Bucky says, his voice shaky.

Steve recognises an opening when he sees one, and he seizes it, because Bucky almost _never_ leaves openings. He scrambles to his feet and crowds into Bucky’s space as the other man retreats, pushing him back against the wall, caging him in between his arms. “Bucky,” he breathes. “Come to dinner with me.” And, to make his intentions absolutely clear, he adds, “On a date. I like you. Romantically.”

Bucky just gazes at him, lips parted in surprise. Then he shuts those gorgeous eyes and seems to shrink, turning away, hiding his face against the wall. “I… I can’t.”

Steve lets his arms fall back to his sides.

“I want to, but I can’t. I, I’m sorry,” Bucky mumbles. “I’m in training. The championship fight’s in a week and I can’t…” Bucky gestures with one hand at Steve. “…distractions.”

“I understand,” says Steve. “Maybe afterwards?”

Bucky nods. “When it’s all over. Yeah.” Then he folds in on himself again, those magnificent, muscle-corded shoulders hunching. “I’m not very experienced,” he mutters.

Steve laughs. “Me neither.” Bucky’s head whips up, surprise and disbelief clear in his expression, so Steve takes pity on him. “In my case, by the time anyone wanted me, there was literally a war on. Afterwards...” he shrugs. “Haven’t found anyone I liked.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, pulling on a t-shirt. “Same here, more or less.”

“Oh, were you in Afghanistan?” Steve asks.

Bucky clams up again, rummaging around in his case of clothes for another navy hoodie and an old, faded pair of jeans for himself. So Steve changes the subject, even as he adds _War?!_ To his lengthy list of _Unanswered Questions About Bucky_. “So who are you fighting next week?”

“Guy who beat me last time,” Bucky says, pulling up his jeans.

Steve grabs the clothes Bucky set aside for him and begins pulling them on. “Should I be worried there’s a pro fighter out there who can roll you?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Ugh, he shouldn’t even be in my weight class. He’s a nine foot tall human-lizard hybrid. But apparently lizards have light bones.”

“Don’t tell me he cut his tail off to make weigh-in.”

Bucky glowers at him. “I wouldn’t put it past that bastard.”

“Walk me to the subway?” Steve says, zipping up his hoodie. It’s soft and it smells like Bucky and he regrets nothing as he bundles up the uniform and shoves it into a stuff-bag he keeps in a belt pouch.

Bucky smiles. “I can do that.”

* * *

It’s going great until they’re just north of Times Square and a flock of robot owls start taking out people sitting on the TKTS steps with laser beams from their eyes. The robots have the same ornate silver design as the Kree armour from Fury’s briefing.

Steve grabs his shield off his back, hits the emergency Avengers button on it, and turns to Bucky, to suggest a pincer formation to reduce the area of damage the birds are causing.

Only to find that Bucky has his hood up and is running away.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts, furious that Bucky would ditch on him when the two of them could stop this, together, before more civilians got hurt.

Bucky glances back over his shoulder. His eyes are terrified. “I’m sorry,” he mouths. His flesh hand reaches up and touches the back of his neck. “Hit them here. They have a weak spot.”

Then he disappears into the panicking crowd.

Bucky is right about one thing: the only way to take the birds down is by a shot to the back of their necks. Steve, on his own with his shield, can’t take many down. But if Bucky had stayed, Steve could have sent him up to a rooftop and they could have thrown the shield between them.

It takes Sam, Natasha, Tony and Clint fifteen minutes to get there, by which time an H&M and a Sephora have both been reduced to rubble and there are dozens of wounded. It takes only five minutes for the combined efforts of the Avengers to take down the birds.

Steve is so angry by the end that he wings his shield into the pavement hard enough to split a stone tile. The shield gets stuck there, a monument to his tantrum, as EMTs swarm around, removing the wounded. If Bucky had stayed, none of this would have happened.

Sam lands next to Steve and looks pointedly at the shield, then at Steve, then crosses his arms.

“If you tell me to use my words, I will throw you through the window of that Applebees,” Steve growls.

“Ohhhkay,” Sam says.

Before he can think twice about it, Steve pulls out his phone and drafts a text to Coach Cage to the effect that Steve thinks it’s best they don’t spar for a few weeks, and so he’s cancelling all his sessions for the foreseeable future.

He’s about to press _SEND_ when Natasha plucks the phone out of his hands. “Hey!” He says.

“You’re making the face Tony makes when he’s about to blow up a bridge he’s still standing on,” Natasha says. She tucks Steve’s phone into one of her belt pouches. “I’ll give this back to you in six hours, and then you can decide if you still want to send that text.”

“I hate you,” Steve grumbles, without any heat in it.

“You’re welcome,” Natasha grins. “Let’s go home. Nice outfit, by the way.”

Steve glances down at himself. His borrowed clothes are torn, filthy, and covered in stains he doesn’t really want identified. “Shit. These aren’t mine.”

“Oh?” Natasha says. “You don’t know anyone to borrow clothes from.”

“I know people!” Steve says, hurrying after her.

“Dude,” Clint says, dropping down from a fire escape and falling into step on Steve’s other side, “No you don’t. And I say that as part of the tag team that took you out on Enforced Socialization last time.”

Natasha just smirks as she sashays down the sidewalk, cutting glances at Steve from under her eyelashes every few steps.

Steve stops and throws his hands up in the air. “Why did you ask if you already knew whose clothes these are?” He groans.

“I like hearing you say it,” Natasha says. “Besides,” she sighs, “apparently following your friends and digging up information on the people they interact with is A Severely Inappropriate Way To Express Loyalty And Affection, according to my SHIELD deprogrammer.”

“Like, what did they suggest you do instead?” Clint says. “Buy a Hallmark card?”

Natasha snorts. “ _Plan leisure-time activities together_. I tried to explain that tailing my friends IS a leisure-time activity together. They go somewhere, I follow them.”

“Wait, Natasha. Back up,” Steve says. “You found information on Bucky?”

“Maybe,” Natasha says. “Want to see it?”

“No,” Steve huffs.

* * *

Steve lasts 24 hours before he stalks into SHIELD’s New York Station, looking for Natasha. He’s still mad, but he’s not going to refuse information if someone’s already dug it up.

Natasha is, naturally, in the Submarine, the highest-security floor, where the central, windowless offices are encased in a thin skin of a special metal alloy that won’t allow signal in or out.

As Steve heads up there, SHIELD staff keep congratulating him on the Times Square attack. It’s enough to make his anger over the wasted time and wasted lives come roaring back, and he finally snaps at some well-meaning analyst, “It was our worst mission in months! What are you talking about?”

The man visibly cringes, then straightens, and says, “But you helped clean up. It means a lot to people. The Avengers _never_ stick around after the fight, but this time you came back and cleaned up.”

Steve gives the man a look of utter confusion, because _no he hadn’t_.

The man’s eyes widen and he pulls out his phone, pulling up a Youtube video. He presses play and holds the screen up for Steve to see. “You might have thought you were incognito, sir,” he says, “but the super strength and the fact you were wearing the same outfit as during the attack kinda gave you away.”

Steve squints at the screen. It’s shaky, like whoever recorded it was either overexcited or in shock, or both. In the wreckage of the H&M, a man in a navy hoodie and black ball cap hefts a piece of masonry the size of a small car out of the way and then holds up a broken I-beam, clearing an opening into the collapsed store as EMTs rush in and bring out a group of wounded, terrified teenage girls who had been trapped inside.

The man is covered in masonry dust and his hood is up, but Steve doesn’t even need to look to know that he’s not wearing grey sweatpants. He’s wearing old, faded jeans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The three genders: Gormenghast, Narnia and LoTR
> 
> NC Wyeth’s illustrations to the 1922 _The Boy’s King Arthur_ were The Business. Here’s Sir Percival: 
> 
> So this is probably going to be four chapters. If you like this, you might enjoy some of my other fics. 
> 
> I also have _The Scottish Boy_ , a former fic that came down off AO3 so it could be published as a novel! If meticulously-researched queer medieval thrillers with a lot of sex and violence and hot knights sounds like your sort of thing, [please check the book out](https://unbound.com/books/the-scottish-boy/)! 
> 
> I am, of course, [also on tumblr](https://alexdecampi.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

There’s something wrong with Steve’s clearance for the Submarine floor, so after ten minutes of fruitless wrangling he leaves a message for Natasha, stomps back down the access stairs to the 17th floor and begins to wear a groove in their reception-area carpet.

Natasha appears a few minutes later, leaning out the elevator doors and whistling at Steve to get his attention. “So,” she says, once he joins her in the elevator.

“Today has… not gone well so far,” Steve says, as the doors shut.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

“My high horse turned out to be a Shetland pony,” Steve sighs.

“They so often do,” Natasha says quietly. “Hot fudge sundae cheer you up?”

“Yes. Extra maraschino cherries, though.”

“Freak,” Natasha snorts.

“Hey, you’re the one who likes Turkish Delight,” Steve counters.

“The White Witch was unfairly maligned. Tempting young boys with Turkish Delight is absolutely a valid career path,” Natasha hums as the elevator doors open on the main lobby floor. “Plus, it’s delicious. Especially the rose flavour.”

“One day you’re going to realise that opinion is just another fake Red Room implant,” Steve counters.

Natasha gasps, and puts her hand over her chest. “But those memories… they’re real… to me,” she fake-sobs.

“Also, it’s 2018, as God is my witness, neither of us ever have to eat cabbage again,” Steve says, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“But I like cabbage,” Natasha mutters, as the elevator dings, announcing their imminent arrival in the lobby.

“Yeah, uh, me too,” Steve says, stepping out of the doors as they open. “Hey, have you ever had colcannon—“

But then his train of thought goes right off track, because Bucky is standing in front of him. Bucky, in a baggy, fuzzy grey-blue sweater and old jeans, his hair pulled back off his face, his hands in soft knit gloves.

They stare at each other. Bucky looks great, soft and approachable and so young, his hard edges hidden under wool and denim. Steve’s brain spins, trying to think of something to say, even as his stomach twists with butterflies and his fingers itch to reach out and touch. He hates himself now for cancelling all his sparring sessions, feels like all the missed days are forcing him into a sort of withdrawal. It’s been two days since he has touched Bucky, grappled with him, made him smile.

Then Natasha knocks into him, deliberately (she doesn’t do anything by accident), reminding him to 1) get out of the way of the elevator doors and 2) say something.

So he blurts out, “What are you doing here?”

It comes out harsher than intended, his surprise turning it into an accusation, and he instantly wants to start over but it’s too late.

Bucky is already stepping back, ducking his head to hide behind his hair, an ashamed blush colouring his cheeks. “Uh…” is all he manages.

“Barnes! My office, now,” comes Nick Fury’s voice, as the man himself strides out of the private elevator at the end.

Bucky nods quickly, nervously, his posture stiffening but his eyes still on the ground. He hurries away into the elevator Fury just vacated.

Fury strides towards Steve, his brows raised, his manner at once both inviting questions and assuring that they will be slapped down. Steve just points at Bucky, who’s shoved his hands in his pockets and is leaning against the side of the elevator, gaze still shyly downcast.

Fury stops about five feet from Steve, and narrows his eyes. “He does some translation work for us. Rare language skills. You come here for a reason, Captain? Or are you just hanging around, trying to intimidate my consultants?”

Steve feels a small, strong hand slip around his elbow, and then Natasha says, “oh, Rogers is my lunch date, we’re just leaving.” Then a tug as Natasha steers him towards the exit.

The automatic sliding glass doors of Shield’s front entrance have never felt so much like the release to a pressure valve as right then. Steve could swear he can feel the air lighten as they step outside. Until he becomes aware that Natasha is looking at him, assessing him.

He leans back on his heels. “Don’t say it,” he sighs.

“I don’t need to,” Natasha smirks. “The chemistry is far too obvious to comment on.” Then her smile fades. “But Steve, be careful. That’s someone who absolutely hasn’t been fully deprogrammed yet. Trust me.”

“I know, Natasha,” Steve replies. “He sleeps on a pile of packing blankets like a stray dog.”

Natasha frowns at him, then grabs his sleeve, pinching him. She drops her voice. “Not here,” she whispers, then she stalks off, in complete confidence that he’ll follow.

And he does, of course, bobbing along after her as she slips down streets and alleys, leading them away from the bright, aspirational environs of midtown to a distinctly shabbier part of town.

Natasha slides into a hole-in-the-wall Turkish restaurant, orders them both lamb kabobs and halloumi, and then props her elbows on the worn formica table. “I finally found something on your boy,” she says.

“What?” Steve says, dropping into the booth opposite her.

“He’s a milk-carton kid.”

Steve looks at her, confused. Natasha waits a moment, purely for dramatic effect, before huffing out a small breath and digging her phone out of her pocket.

Natasha pushes it over to Steve. On the screen is a fuzzy black and white picture of a young boy with messy dark hair. MISSING, it says. 14 YEARS OLD, it says.

“In America in the Seventies and Eighties, they started putting the photos of missing kids on the back of milk cartons,” Natasha explains. “Bucky Barnes went missing when he was 14. Family was on holiday in Wyoming, near Devils Tower, and one night he just… vanished. That’s the last record of him.”

“Oh,” Steve says, sipping his glass of water..

Natasha rolls her eyes. “It’s from 1972,” Natasha says.

Steve snorts water out his nose. “What.”

“He went missing in 1972. The Winter Soldier’s first fight was 18 months ago.” Natasha tilts the phone screen back towards herself, then angles it to Steve again. “This definitely him?”

Steve nods, staring at the wide doe eyes and broad grin and messy hair of the boy in the photo. “Yeah. I mean… yeah.”

“Hmmm,” Natasha says. “I want to meet him. He’s interesting.”

“No,” Steve says.

* * *

“Well?”

Nick Fury is looking over Bucky’s shoulder at the glowing symbols on the screen in front of him, and it’s driving him crazy. He’s already wound up from seeing Steve Rogers, stupid Steve with his earnest face and disappointed expression, Steve who doesn’t want to spar with him any more because he thinks Bucky’s a coward.

And now Fury is right behind him and Bucky is having to use every spare ounce of concentration he has not to twitch out and throw Fury across the room because everything They trained into him screams at him to do that.

“Can you please sit down,” Bucky whispers. “Where I can see you.”

He can feel, more than see, Fury’s shift behind him, so he deliberately resets his arm, the small, scale-like plates rippling like the fur of an angry cat.

Fury sits down across the table from him. But his expression remains expectant.

Bucky sighs and leans back in his chair. He no longer really expects any help, or any pity, from the universe, but he is so goddamn tired of its habit of throwing everything at him at once.

He indicates the glowing symbols hanging in the air between him and Fury, and runs his metal finger over a couple lines. They change colour. “It’s on,” Bucky says. “This right here. This is an annexation order. We’d get these… every time.”

“How soon?” Fury says.

Bucky shrugs. “However soon they get here. They’re already on the way.”

“Are you ready?” Fury asks.

“Whether I am or not, it doesn’t matter any more.” Bucky gets up from the table and tugs his gloves back on. “But I was…” He blinks then, shaking his head, trying to keep the memories from overwhelming him. “…their b-best experiment.”

“Do they know you’re here?” Fury says.

Bucky shrugs again. “My own neighborhood barely knows I’m here.”

  
* * *

Steve texts Coach Cage immediately after lunch with Natasha, asking if he can spar.

There’s no answer. Not to that, or to the five following texts and voicemails Steve leaves. He even goes by the gym, at 3pm on a Tuesday, when he knows Cage is usually there. But the gym is locked up tight, the lights off. Nobody home.

He spends a long time looking up at the windows of the floor above the gym, wondering if Bucky is up there. Wondering what he’s doing right then. Even with his vision, he can’t see anything but the reflection of the sky in the windows. He still lifts a hand anyway, and waves, and mouths _I’m Sorry_ , just in case Bucky is in there. In case Bucky can see him.

Then he calls Fury, who also doesn’t call him back.

The only thing keeping Steve from full-on paranoia are the orange posters he notices starting to appear in the windows of the trashier local sports bars around Avengers Tower: _Saturday Night, UFC Middleweight Championship, The Winter Soldier vs Curt “Lizard” Connors_. He stares at the images, the scaled face and fangs of Connors, the sheer size of him… and Bucky, in his mask and warpaint. And he fixes on odd little details, like how Bucky’s metal arm looks different in the poster image, more robotic, more like a prosthetic than an organic part of him.

He thinks about that arm, the strange warmth of it slipping under his leather shield-strap, metal knuckles gliding over his chest, and goosebumps prickle all over his body.

“…Captain Rogers?”

Steve blinks. He’s in a SHIELD briefing room with the Avengers, listening to Coulson drone on about aliens. He’s not in the gym. Bucky is… gone.

“Captain. Rogers.”

“Yes, Agent?” Steve says, resisting the temptation to let his voice drop into its icier registers.

Coulson makes his thin smile. “Glad to have you back with us. Do you need me to go over the last point?”

“I’m sure it’s in the briefing materials. Don’t let me hold everyone else up,” Steve answers, and Clint shoots him a look of blatant relief.

Coulson nods. “Right. As I was saying, given the not-inconsiderable history of both the Krees and the Skrulls with meddling with individual humans, we can’t overlook the likelihood of alien-aligned sleeper agents on Earth.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “One single agent, at the right time, in the right place…”

“…could tip us into a war with either empire that we cannot win,” Coulson finishes.

“ _Really_ ,” Steve says, doubt colouring his voice. They’ve done this before. They can do it again.

“Really,” Agent Coulson replies, as serious as the grave. “Captain, this isn’t a small brigade of Tesseract-controlled Chitauri. This is an empire, vaster than you can imagine.”

“Speaking of control,” Natasha interjects, “if there are sleeper agents… what is the chance that they’re operating under free will, versus brainwashed?”

Coulson sighs. “We have very limited knowledge of either empire’s techniques, beyond interviews with a few recovered test subjects. But based on what we know… yes. It’s likely their sleeper agents have no idea of their programming, until it becomes active.”

“Fuck,” Sam breathes.

“That… could be fun,” Natasha says, dry as the desert.

“Who did they take?” Steve asks. “What should we be looking for?”

Coulson shrugs. “Their MO was to take people that wouldn’t be missed. Young. Healthy. Runaways, a lot of the time. But those people could be any age now. In short: if we’re invaded, and you see any civilians acting strangely, take them down with the fastest non-lethal method you can.” He frowns. “You have no idea what has been done to these people. You’ll only get one shot.”

* * *

  
“Well, that was cheerful,” Sam says afterwards.

“I liked the Chitauri, you know,” Steve muses. “Easy targets. Crunch nicely when you punch ‘em. Didn’t look like humans. Didn’t even bleed like humans.”

Tony shakes his head, his expression pale and tight. “Last time…” he begins, his voice drying up.

“They seem… better prepared, this time,” Natasha says, bumping Tony’s shoulder, trying to ignore the way his hands are shaking.

“Anyway, what’s up with you,” Sam says, his voice pitched low enough so only Steve can hear. “You gotta warn a guy if you’re gonna blank out during a SHIELD briefing. All of us are trusting you to be the one to pay attention, Cap.”

Natasha sidles up too. Damn her perfect radar for drama. “Yes, you look… uptight.”

Steve rubs his eyes. “Look, Bucky’s gone, the gym’s locked up, and he doesn’t have a damn phone so I can’t talk to him and…” he gestures. “…I just want to see him.”

Clint materialises on his other side. “Ohhh, this is the guy that knocked you out?”

“Twice,” Sam squeaks in a falsetto from behind Steve, who immediately feels the hot slap of a blush burn across his cheeks.

“Why don’t you go see him at his fight?” Clint says.

“I dunno,” Steve says. “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to m—“

Natasha whacks him upside the head. Her hands are tiny, but she hits _hard_. “Or maybe he’s just concentrating on training ahead of a championship bout, you idiot. Besides, I already bought us all tickets,” she grins.

“I…” Steve stutters.

“Told you I wanted to meet him,” Natasha smirks.

* * *

The Avengers, incognito edition, roll into Barclays Center on Friday night for the UFC+ fight. Natasha’s managed to get them perfect fourth-row seats (“pfft, only assholes sit in the front row,” she says, earning an outraged squawk from Tony).

Steve manages to keep his hyper-awareness under control for the first couple of lighter-weight matches but as soon as they call an intermission before the main event — Bucky’s fight — he loses it. Before anyone can stop him, hell, before he can stop _himself_ , he’s heading down the aisle and pulling his best Captain America Doesn’t Need A Badge to breeze past the security at the fighters’ entrance.

He doesn’t even know what he wants to say, other than that he’s sorry, and that he misses Bucky, and to wish him good luck, but it all dies in his chest when he comes around the corner to find Coach Cage standing in front of Bucky’s door, arms crossed.

“I believe your seat’s out that way,” Cage says, indicating with his chin the way Steve had come.

“I, I just,” Steve begins.

Cage tilts his head, and drops his voice. “Barnes is in a real good frame of mind for this fight. Took him a while, but he’s there. You really want to talk to him right now? You think it’s gonna help him win?”

“Uh,” Steve says.

“Because unless you are absolutely sure whatever you’re going to say to him is gonna get him more hype to knock Connors clean out of the damn ring and back to Staten Island where he belongs, then _this_ —“ Coach Cage says, waving a hand at Steve’s presence in the hallway, “this visit is about _you_. And right now, right now it has to be about him, and the fight he has starting in ten minutes. Don’t ruin this for him, Rogers. He’s worked too hard for it.”

Steve shifts nervously from foot to foot. He feels a blush climbing to his cheeks again. “You’re right,” he whispers, staring at his sneakers. “I’ll… just…” he points behind him, to where he can hear the dull echo of the hype music and the roar of the crowd.

Cage nods. “You do that.”

“Maybe we could spar… after?” Steve asks. “Next week.”

“Maybe,” Cage answers, his attention already slipping away from Steve and back to the closed door of Bucky’s room.

Steve nods and retreats back to his seat. He buys himself a light beer on the way, for no other reason than it gives him something to hold, and an excuse for where he was.

The hype music builds, and then cuts to silence, and the lights in the ring go dark. They hadn’t done this with any of the previous bouts, and Steve immediately goes tense.

Then the lights come back up, to two robed silhouettes in the Octagon, and the announcer’s voice rings out, and all Steve can think is, _Jesus, that one guy is huge_.

“—Curt ‘Lizard’ Connors, versus the Winter Soldier!”

Both fighters let their robes slip to the ground as the crowd screams their approval. Steve wants to spend a moment looking over Bucky’s form, a body he knows intimately from sparring, to see if his first impression is right that the man has bulked up even more since they last fought… but Steve’s eyes can’t help being pulled to Connors. He’s eight feet tall to Bucky’s six feet, and the sort of slim that suggests he’s fast. His skin is scaled, his nails so thick they could function as claws, and he has a tail, which slaps hard on the canvas. The Lizard doesn’t wear a mask, but why would he need to? There’s no way to hide his identity. (And Steve feels a brief pang of sympathy for the guy. Connors is clearly the Lizard, wherever he goes, while Steve can put on a hoodie and a ball cap and be almost incognito, most of the time.)

“Ugh, Godzilla there has got a good foot of reach on your boy,” Tony grumbles.

“He’s not my boy,” Steve shoots back, even as his eyes travel over to Bucky.

Bucky’s in his face mask and black war paint, and skintight wet-look black boxing shorts with a red stripe down the side, and Steve spends far too long staring at Bucky’s very muscular ass and then the bell rings and—

—Bucky’s on the defensive almost immediately, the fight exploding into life almost faster than the unenhanced eye can track. A giant multi-faceted digital display over the Octagon streams the key hits as they happened, slowed down to be visibe, but Steve keeps his eyes in the ring. Connors uses his clawed hands and feet, as well as his tail, to send an overwhelming volley of blows at Bucky, blows Bucky can’t return easily because of their height difference.

Then Bucky stumbles, and Steve smiles, because he’s seen that stumble before. He’s fallen for it.

And Connors does too. He’s overconfident, sure he can shut Bucky out same as their last fight (Steve watched it on Youtube). Connors goes for a haymaker, leaning in to put the full force of his body behind it— then gasps in surprise when Bucky dodges it easily, grabbing Connors’ right forearm in his metal hand and twisting, both the forearm and himself, and before Connors realises it he’s flying over Bucky and landing on his back in the ring.

He’s up again in a second, kipping up with some help from his tail, but that’s the first round done.

The next two rounds are much the same: Bucky ducking and weaving, taking a few glancing blows and lulling Connors into a false sense of confidence, then getting in one or two really solid, bone-shaking hits on the lizard-man. Steve can see the strategy in it. Connors is already tiring, his hits slower, his combos sloppier. It’s only a matter of time, Steve thinks, until he slows enough that Bucky will go in for the metaphorical kill.

But then it goes dreadfully wrong in the fourth round.

Bucky sends Connors hard into the bars of the Octagon with an uppercut to the kidneys that would have most men peeing blood for a week. Connors flushes yellow with fury, and in a sort of Hail Mary his tail lashes out between the bars of the Octagon and grabs a folding metal chair from one of the front rows. He whips it into the ring and it collides with Bucky’s head, hard enough that the _KRAK_ of it against his skull causes the entire arena to gasp and fall silent.

Bucky drops backwards onto the canvas with a heavy thump, followed by the softer thumps of the referee’s hand as he counts down towards knockout.

Steve is close enough to watch the blood beginning to pool from the gash on Bucky’s temple, to see his long eyelashes flutter through what looks like a mini-seizure.

Connors is already dancing around in victory, fists in the air.

Then, on Four, Bucky’s eyes open.

On Three, he gets up.

Steve knows something is off as soon as Bucky stands. Because… Steve can’t explain it. It’s Bucky that went down. But it’s not Bucky that stands back up. Sure, same fluid grace, same calm focus, but… the Bucky he knows might have the body of a fighter, but he has the eyes of a poet. The man who stood up after that blow to the head has the flat, dead eyes of a contract killer.

“There’s something wrong,” Steve whispers to Sam.

He glances over at Natasha, and her eyes are wide, her complexion pale. She notices it too. She’s calmly thumbing her sleeve back to expose a Widow’s Bite.

“Are we—“ Tony says, hand over his watch.

Steve puts out a hand, stopping them, bidding them silently to wait. He’s not going to ruin this for Bucky.

Collins looks around just in time to catch Bucky’s fist in his face. He reacts well, despite the blood pouring out of his flattened nose, and starts raining blows down on any part of Bucky he can reach.

But this time, Bucky doesn’t dodge. He just goes in, and keeps hitting. It’s like he doesn’t care how much he gets hurt, like his body doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even seem to notice the punches Connors is landing on him.

In the fourth row, Steve is close enough to see when Connors realises that he’s not going to stop Bucky. The lizard-man’s strange, narrow pupils widen back to something far more human, and his punches become desperate, messy.

Bucky keeps coming. Or, more accurately, the thing operating Bucky’s body like it was disposable, _that thing_ keeps coming.

He stomps a boot down on Connors’ tail and Steve winces at the crunch from vertebrae breaking. And then there’s an uppercut from the metal fist and Connors is going down.

Connors doesn’t move after he hits the canvas.. He’s out cold. The referee counts down, but Bucky doesn’t move either. He’s just looking down at Connors, fists balled loosely, waiting to see if Connors moves. Waiting to finish him.

They announce the victory and Bucky still doesn’t move.

Then the presenter comes in with the championship belt, and strides towards Bucky, clapping loudly. That’s fine. Then he reaches out and makes to grab at Bucky’s flesh arm. It’s the typical after-fight raise the punchdrunk champ’s arm into the air move, and that’s all anyone expects, but as soon as the man touches him, Bucky whips around and all of that deadly focus is on the presenter and then he’s flying across the Octagon, the small of his back crunching against one of the ring supports.

Everything falls silent.

Bucky prowls towards the man, who’s white with terror, and scrabbling to get away. He reaches down, casually, with his metal hand, towards the back of the man’s neck. Steve has the horrible realisation that Bucky — quiet, gentle, odd Bucky — is about to snap a stranger’s neck. He lurches forwards out of his seat but before he can do anything he sees Coach Cage in his yellow hoodie standing up on the other side of the ring, and he’s holding up a cellphone which is playing a phrase in some foreign language at top volume, and he’s pushing towards the ring entrance and holding the phone out towards Bucky, and Steve could swear that behind him in the shadows is Nick Fury, and just what is Nick Goddamn Fury doing at a UFC+ fight, and just as Bucky’s metal hand closes around the presenter’s neck Steve sees Bucky have that little mini-seizure again and then Bucky relaxes his hand and stands up.

He looks around, as if not sure where he is.

Then he sees Connors, black and blue and out cold on the floor of the ring, and the presenter, whining with fear. The championship belt, discarded on the canvas. Bucky’s eyes widen in horror and he shakes his head, as if he can dismiss the scene in front of him.

“Fuckin’ psychopath!” somebody yells from the audience. A few more people begin booing.

Steve looks back to where Fury might have been, but the man is gone, vanished so completely Steve begins to wonder if he was ever really there.

Coach Cage is already in the ring, throwing the silk robe over Bucky’s shoulders, and leading him out. Bucky goes, gentle as a lamb, his head down. Cage pulls the robe’s hood up over his head, but Steve is close enough to see tear marks tracking down through the smudged warpaint under his eyes.

They all sit in silence for a few moments, watching EMTs come in and take out Connors, and the presenter.

“Well, that was… something,” Tony says.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I, uh, regret every joke I made about him knocking you out, Steve. Jesus.”

“You saw Fury too, right?” Steve says to Natasha.

She nods. ”Steve… he’s… he’s not safe.”

“Why isn’t anyone helping him, then?” Sam says.

Natasha snorts. “Because he’s more useful this way, clearly.”

* * *

  
Steve doesn’t sleep that night. He can’t see anything but the horrified expression in Bucky’s face when he came back to himself.

He texts Coach Cage, offering the use of the Avengers’ medical suite if Bucky is hurt, and doesn’t get a reply.

He thinks about Bucky’s bare living conditions, no better than you might give a stray cat, thinks about Bucky lying bruised and bleeding and scared as he heals all alone in his nest of packing blankets in a cold warehouse.

He thinks about what Bucky does for food, and thinks about the cubbyhole off Cage’s office that doubles as a kitchen, with its mini-fridge full of protein shakes, and its coffee-maker, and its elderly microwave with its geological eras of baked-on food, that can reduce the center of a frozen burrito to a molten state while still leaving ice crystals on the outside.

He’s still thinking the next morning during his run, and before he fully comes to a decision he finds his feet have taken him to a small, gourmet grocer in Hells Kitchen, Amish Market, that he’d occasionally hit for coffee on the way back from sparring.

Now he goes in and digs his emergency credit card out of the zippered pocket of his running shorts, and buys half the damn market. Because if Bucky’s metabolism is anything like his, he’s going to be hungry as hell while he’s healing up. Steve buys everything he craves when he’s recovering, and then some extra stuff, just in case: breads, meats, cheeses, olives, potato chips, quiche, cookies, croissants. He stares for a long time at the chocolate cupcakes, wondering if he can rationalise them as normal-person breakfast food, and almost buys muffins instead until he realises that muffins are just cupcakes without frosting, and muffins are both 1) healthy and 2) breakfast foods, so cupcakes must be just extra-good muffins. Once he’s had that epiphany, he throws some red-velvet cupcakes in alongside the chocolate ones. Then he buys four coffees and a whole gallon of orange juice and slogs the extra two blocks west to Cage’s gym.

It’s still locked up.

Steve puts down all his food bags, looks both ways, and then quietly rips the chain in two. The gym is silent, dark, as he walks across it towards the stairs.

When he gets to Bucky’s floor, the heavy sliding door is shut, but not locked. He dumps his bags down again and knocks softly at it. “Buck?” He calls. “It’s Steve. I, uh, I brought you breakfast?”

There’s no answer.

He knocks again. “Are you there? Can I come in?”

This time he thinks he hears something, not more than a quiet whimper.

He has the door open and he’s halfway across the room before he realises it.

And there’s Bucky, exactly as Steve had pictured him, curled up in a nest of blankets in a dirty tank top and old sweatpants, his hair greasy, his body and face mottled with the yellow and pink remains of almost-healed wounds.

Steve raises the bags up. They rustle. “Are you hungry?” He says. “I always get really hungry the next day.”

There’s a barely-perceptible nod from the blanket nest.

“Can I come over there?” Steve asks.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Bucky rasps out, as he struggles to sit up. Then he raises his arms, his palms facing Steve at shoulder height in a gesture of surrender.

“That’s not what I meant,” Steve says, dumping the bags down at the edges of the blankets and lowering himself to the floor. “In my day a man just didn’t march into another man’s bedroom without asking.”

That gets the corner of Bucky’s lip twitching into a smile, and it’s like watching the sun break through the clouds after a natural disaster. The wreckage of the night before is all still there, but in sunlight, it seems smaller, less overwhelming. Like maybe it’s something they can survive.

Steve presses a coffee into Bucky’s hands, and those long lashes flutter closed in delight at the smell, at the warmth. “The presenter, he was fine,” Steve says. “Bad bruising, nothing else. Connors broke some bones, but he’ll heal.”

Bucky cringes back, curling in on himself, his cheeks burning with shame.

“Buck… I know your strength,” Steve sighs, wishing Bucky wouldn’t flinch away. “If you wanted them dead, you would have killed them. Don’t pretend you couldn’t have put them right through the bars of the Octagon if you wanted.” He rakes a hand through his hair, so he can keep from reaching out to the other man. “But you didn’t. Wherever you were, you didn’t use lethal force. Something in you wouldn’t let you do that.”

Bucky takes a few sips, then presses his shoulder against Steve. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he whispers. He’s so warm, and it’s too brief, and Steve sways a little towards him as Bucky pulls away.

“Who… what was that?” Steve asks.

“Me,” Bucky says. “Another part of me.” He takes another long drink of his coffee, as Steve begins to tear a baguette into chunks and make messy prosciutto-and-brie sandwiches. Something, anything to do with his hands.

“Not the real you,” Steve says. “I know the real you.”

Bucky shrugs. “I dunno. Could be.” He reaches with unerring accuracy into the bag with the cupcakes and makes a happy little noise in his throat as he pulls out the red velvet ones. “I really don’t know.” Then he looks up at Steve, his pale eyes bright with emotion. “I can’t believe you brought me food.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve breathes. “I like you.”

Bucky giggles as he eats a big bite of cupcake frosting. “You have weird taste.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I trust you to tell me when you can. I just know I can’t get it out of my mind, when you…. When you, uh, picked me up by the harness.” Steve’s blushing, he knows he is, but he forces himself to look up, into Bucky’s silver eyes.

“You… liked that?” Bucky whispers.

Steve nods. “Yeah. A lot.”

Bucky very deliberately puts his coffee down, his eyes never leaving Steve’s. Then he reaches over and puts his mismatched hands on Steve’s hips. Steve has a moment to get used to the touch and then he’s being lifted and pulled forwards, until he’s in Bucky’s lap, legs sprawled awkwardly around Bucky’s waist. “This okay, too?” Bucky whispers, and his face is very close to Steve’s. He can feel the warmth of Bucky’s breath, the scent of coffee on it.

“Uh-huh,” Steve says, and presses a messy kiss to Bucky’s cheek, just next to his mouth. He can feel Bucky’s hands roam up his back, over his shoulder blades, and it’s setting his entire body on fire.

“No harness today,” Bucky murmurs.

“A regretful oversight on my part,” Steve replies. “Another time, I promise.”

“Hi,” Bucky says, smiling, as he brushes his lips over Steve’s. “I still don’t know what I’m doing.”

“God, Buck,” Steve moans. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I like you a lot,” Bucky says, trailing his lips along Steve’s jaw.

Steve tilts his head up, surrendering, giving Bucky the long column of his neck, inviting him to move lower. His hands move of their own volition up to Bucky’s ribcage, clutching at the broad muscles of his chest.

Bucky hisses in pain.

“Ah, sorry—“ Steve says, gentling his touch. He looks down at Bucky, at the cuts and bruises still decorating his perfect body under the tight, grimy tank he’s wearing. “The bruises, they’re, um, kinda doing it for me, too.”

Bucky grins again. Then he casts down his eyes, shyly. “I, uh, I watched porn. As, as research. And thought of you.”

“What did you learn?” Steve says, tipping Bucky’s chin back up with a finger. He so badly wants to kiss Bucky breathless, but also this sweetness, this being on the edge of beginning, he doesn’t want that to end either, he wants to just sit and hold Bucky, and rest against him, and soak in his happiness and warmth.

Bucky settles against him, nestling his scruffy cheek into the softness of Steve’s neck. “You know. Tab A, Slot B, et cetera.”

Steve more carefully wraps his arms around Bucky, trying not to press on any injuries. “This is nice too, though.”

“Yeah, it is,” Bucky says. “I don’t get a lot of hugs. Or any. This is the first I remember.”

The deep pain and loneliness held by those simple words twists at Steve, and he moves his hands around to frame Bucky’s face. “Can I kiss you? On the mouth?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods, and Steve presses in, gently, covering Bucky’s lips with his own. It feels like the whole world stops, and it’s only them, and this soft kiss, and then Bucky opens his mouth and Steve is inside, and something inside of him tips over the precipice into ragged, burning lust. He guesses by the way Bucky’s breathing is coming short and hard and he’s pressing that hard, half-metal body against him, Bucky is feeling the same.

“Buck,” Steve pants, “I want—“

Steve’s words are cut off by a strange alarm filling the air. He glances over his shoulder: the metal cases of Bucky’s things along the wall are glowing green, and the two on the end are opening, unfolding.

Bucky stiffens underneath him, and gently pushes Steve off him. As he stands, he says, “I’m sorry, Steve. I‘m… sorry.”

“Buck, what’s going on—?” Steve asks. “Where are you—“

“I have to go,” Bucky says, as he walks away, towards those cases, stripping off his tank and sweatpants and leaving them where they fall.

“Bucky! Tell me, please, what is going on—“ Steve says, the frustration in his voice tipping almost into anger.

Bucky turns, a great sadness in his face, and Steve watches as tears well up in his eyes. As slim, flexible plates of silver, red and black armor float up out of one of the the metal cases and cover his naked body. “Steve,” Bucky says, grabbing weapons harnesses out of the other case, harnesses that seem alive, molding themselves like hungry serpents around his body. “I’m a Ghost Warrior of the Kree Empire. I was human once, but they re-made me, completely. Now they are here, and I must go to them.”

Bucky puts on a helmet and pulls a long, alien-looking bladed spear / rifle combo out of the case. “I may not come back.”

“Wait—“ Steve says, lunging forwards. “You don’t have to—“

But Bucky touches something on his shoulder, and he dematerialises right in front of Steve’s eyes.

A moment later, Steve’s phone screams out its own alarm: _Code Black. Extinction-level threat._

_Avengers Assemble._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update has taken so long. The end of 2018 has been... a lot. There’s only one more chapter to go in this (I think!)
> 
> A reminder that if you like my writing, I have [a formerly Stucky fic that’s being made into a novel over at Unbound](https://unbound.com/books/the-scottish-boy/), and it’s almost fully funded so maybe check it out if it sounds like your sort of thing: romance, sex, medieval politics, knights, fighting, suspense, &c. Lots more excerpts in the Updates tab.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Invasion, and aftermath.

The spaceship is so vast it casts a shadow across most of Washington, D.C. At the edge of that shadow, on the half of the Mall that’s still in sunlight, a silver landing craft sparkles. Crowds have gathered — dazed office workers and tourists, held back by National Guard. The view is the same in other capitals around the world, great shadow-ships taking up the skies above Lagos, Mumbai, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow, Istanbul, Cairo, London, Paris, Sao Paolo, and Mexico City.

The atmosphere is tense as the Earth waits to hear its fate, everyone oddly numb. The Avengers push through the crowd in DC easily, only stopping when they reach the front and Nick Fury bars their way. Steve opens his mouth but before he can say anything, Fury thrusts a handful of small earpieces at them. “Translators,” the SHIELD chief says. “You’ll need them, for what happens next.”

“What are we doing next?” Tony asks, opening his Iron Man mask.

“Stand here and hope our side wins,” Fury says, turning back to watch a delegation of Kree exit the silver landing craft. Steve is struck once again by their elegance, in slim silver armour and ceremonial robes.

The lead Kree begins to read from a tablet, their voice melodious and strange. In Steve’s ear, the headpiece hums to life and begins to translate: “—the planet known as Earth, now finding itself on the Western front of the Third Kree-Skull War and deemed a primitive planet by the categories set forth in Intergalactic Treaty 708B, you are hereby annexed into the protective embrace of the Kree Empire, your resources to be best used as the Empire sees fit.”

“Uh, that’d be a no from me,” Tony says. Fury waves a hand to shush him.

But then a figure is separating itself from the crowd. A figure in form-fitting silver, black and red armour, a helmet cradled under an alien-metal arm, a face marked with black warpaint. A dark mask over the lower half of his face. Steve’s heart begins to race as the warrior — as Bucky — answers back in the same melodious language. The communicator in Steve’s ear crackles to life again.

“I hear your annexation order, and I claim exemption from it under sub-paragraph 1042C, single combat clause. I will fight your champion for the independence of Earth. I am of this planet, and thus qualified to stand for it.”

And Steve finally realises what Bucky’s “training” was really for. What Fury meant when he said he had an asset in place for that.

Part of him yearns to surge forwards, to claim the fight for his own to protect Bucky, but Fury is glaring at him as if he can read Steve’s mind. Fury minutely shakes his head and Steve forces himself to calm down and refocus on the Kree noble, to observe his reaction to Bucky’s offer.

The Kree noble breaks into bright peals of laughter. “Ghost Warrior,” the nobleman says. “You rendered great service to our Empire before deserting.” He pauses, looking Bucky up and down. Bucky is motionless, slipped into that unnatural stillness of his. “And now you think you are of this planet.” The Kree noble shakes his head. “Little soldier, you joined us willingly as a child, and were completely re-made by our engineers into our weapon. There is nothing human of you left.” The noble gestures at the space around them. “You are here, but you are not of here. You, standing for Earth.” The noble snorts in derision. “Tell me, little ghost, when you die on this field today, will any of these Earthlings miss you? You cannot stand for them, if none of them would stand for you.”

Steve is in the clearing before he can think twice about it. “I will,” he says. It comes out choked, and soft. He raises his voice. “I will miss him. You’re wrong about him. He’s so much more than what you made him. I…” Steve grits his teeth. “I love him.”

Bucky’s head turns to him then, those grey poet’s eyes wide, and filled with so much hope and love it nearly makes Steve’s heart stop. It takes everything he has not to rush to Bucky’s side. Instead, he unslings his shield and holds it up, wordlessly offering it to Bucky.

The edges of those eyes crinkle, and Steve is willing to bet everything that Bucky is smiling under his mask. Then Bucky raises his metal hand.

Steve throws him the shield. Bucky catches it flawlessly, and slings it onto his left arm.

“Something borrowed, something blue,” Natasha quips behind him. Steve realises that he’s no longer alone in front of the crowd. All the Avengers have come out, around him, to support him.

Even Fury is next to him, and has filled the space — the collective, shocked drawing-in of breath — with his own words. “James Barnes is on this planet and of it. Do you accept his right to stand for it in combat?”

The Kree lord smiles, but it’s thinner now, an unhappy press of lips. “Of course.” He turns back to his shuttle and gestures. A man flies out, his fists glowing with power, his hair a burning mass of plasma energy. He hovers ten feet in the air, effortlessly. And Steve notices the warrior’s eyes are blank, as blank as Bucky’s were when he had his… whatever happened to him in the fight ring.

“Welp, that’s not great,” Tony mutters.

“You have not been our best experiment in a long time,” the Kree noble sneers to Bucky. He indicates the flying warrior. “We’ve made so many improvements since you.”

But Bucky takes the spear-rifle thing off his back and bangs the butt of it on the ground three times. He makes no other answer.

The Kree raises an arm. “Combat it shall be, then. For Earth.”

He drops his hand.

Fury tugs on Steve’s arm. “I suggest you step back—“

—The first plasma blast blows up a chunk of earth where Bucky had been only a millisecond before.

“Can your shield block a plasma cannon?” Tony asks Steve.

“Uh,” Steve says, but then they find out seconds later as Bucky uses the shield to deflect a blast, angling the ricochet into the Kree landing craft. And an old phrase from his Brooklyn childhood bubbles up in his mind: turnabout is fair play.

“The crowds,” Steve says to Fury. “Collateral damage—“

Fury gets Steve’s point immediately. “I’ll speak to the National Guard. Help get people out of here.”

Steve strides towards the crowd, motioning for them to get back. Most don’t need much convincing, and Steve risks a glance over his shoulder at Bucky.

Bucky’s on the defensive, and it reminds Steve of nothing more than their early sparring matches, where Cage would have one of them simply dodge the other’s blows for round after round. That’s all Bucky’s doing now, evading plasma blasts that disintegrate everything they touch other than the shield. And Steve wonders if the flying Kree warrior has an indefinite supply of plasma energy, or sooner or later it’ll fizzle out. Is that Bucky’s plan? Tire him out? Outlast him through sheer bloody spite?

Apparently not. Bucky flings the shield at the warrior, smoothly lifting the rifle to his shoulder and firing off a double round into the space the warrior dodges into to avoid the shield. The bullets tear into the side of the warrior’s stomach, and he howls his fury, his entire body glowing plasma-bright. The shield arcs back to Bucky’s hand just as the warrior puts both fists together and levels off a blast so huge it knocks Bucky fifty feet back, into a crater of his own making.

“Let’s make this more interesting,” the Kree lord says as Bucky shakily gets to his feet. He says a series of words that the headpiece in Steve’s ear just translates as gibberish, but Bucky stiffens, his eyelids twitching.

“No!” Steve yells, rushing forwards. The only thing that stops him is Tony, landing in front of him.

“Pretty sure single combat means just him, Cap,” Tony says. “Do you trust him?”

Steve nods, slowly. “I do, I just…” He pushes his cowl down and rakes a hand through his grimy hair. “If they kill him, you need to get me out of here fast, or I’m going to take apart everyone on that ship with my bare hands.”

“Noted,” Tony says, placing a metal hand on his shoulder and squeezing gently. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Steve makes a hurt little sound. He’s not proud of it, but Bucky is currently marching straight for the flying plasma warrior, without any heed for his own safety, simply batting away plasma strikes with the shield like they were a mere inconvenience. The rifle is slung across his back again, and he has some sort of space pistol in his right hand and is firing back at the plasma warrior every chance he has. Both combatants are singed, bleeding.

Then Bucky embeds the shield in the pathway beside him, holsters the pistol, and drops into a ready crouch. He beckons the plasma warrior. The sound of his shield being driven with superhuman force into cement sings through Steve’s veins, setting them on fire. Every muscle in his body tenses to join the fight as he watches the combat play out before him. He can’t figure out Bucky’s tactics. Bucky is standing in front of the shield. It seems like suicide, and that clutches at Steve’s heart. Bucky’s safety may not matter to him any more, but it matters to Steve.

The plasma warrior glows bright, then flies straight at Bucky, like a shooting star, like a comet hell-bent on destruction of the best person Steve has ever met.

Bucky blocks his fists with his metal hand, and Steve wonders for a moment if the arm is plasma-proof.

It’s not.

It’s melting, flaking apart, but it’s enough for Bucky to get his other hand on the warrior’s neck and use the man’s own momentum to flip him over and slam his back against the thin edge of the shield. There’s the crunch of shattered bone as the man screams and shudders, and then Bucky’s metal hand rejoins his flesh one and there’s the quick snap of a neck being broken.

Bucky drops the dead plasma warrior at his feet. As the plasma glow fades, it turns out to be just a man, no older or younger than Bucky himself. Steve wonders idly what milk carton bore his visage, what family had to cope with their child vanishing without explanation.

Bucky’s metal arm is smoking, reduced to charred fragments. His armour is shattered, smoking, and his flesh hand has been burned down almost to the bone. But he prowls forwards towards the Kree lord with such purpose that the nobleman takes an involuntary step back, his complexion paling.

“I am still your best experiment,” Bucky says, his voice strange, without its usual warmth or inflection. “Additional firepower does not fully compensate for combat skill and experience.” Then, in one smooth motion, he unslings his rifle and shoulders it, pointing it at the Kree lord. “Now get the hell off my planet and don’t come back.”

Steve can only imagine the pain it causes Bucky to use his destroyed hands like this, but his expression doesn’t flinch, his hands don’t shake. He doesn’t give his enemy the pleasure of knowing that he’s hurt.

“What he said,” Nick Fury comments, stepping forwards. “I believe you have one galactic-standard hour to withdraw, before your actions invalidate any and all previous Kree annexation treaties.”

The Kree lord nods. “That is correct.” He begins to speak into a wrist communicator but Fury raises a finger, stopping him.

“Also, I believe as the victors we have the right to ask that all creatures of earth, human and enhanced, are exempted from service in the Kree military, whether volunteer or coerced.” Fury smiles.

“It is your right,” the Kree lord says. He glances towards Bucky. Bucky’s gun is completely steady, and still pointed at his forehead. “Well fought, little ghost. If you ever want to come home…”

“I am home,” Bucky grits out.

The Kree withdraw surprisingly quickly after that. The lord and the dead warrior are bundled into the landing craft and it’s in the air two minutes later; the shadow of the giant mothership is gone from DC five minutes later.

One second after that, Bucky collapses, his rifle clattering to the ground next to his unconscious form, his blood staining the flagstones beneath him.

Steve rushes over, fussing at the SHIELD agents and techs who are rolling Bucky onto a stretcher, until Fury and Natasha bodily drag him back.

“You’re just slowing them down, Steve,” Natasha counsels.

“We’re taking him to the Triskelion medical wing,” Fury says. “Have a shower, change your clothes, by the time you get over there after that we’ll probably have him stable enough that you can see him.”

“Probably?” Steve growls.

“Steve,” Natasha says. “Let’s go. I have an apartment nearby. I might even have clothes your size.”

* * *

It’s three hours by the time they fight their way through DC traffic — even on a borrowed motorcycle — to Natasha’s, shower, change, and then fight their way back through traffic to the Triskelion. Then Natasha forces him to go to the cafeteria and eat something before seeing Bucky, and Steve hisses at her that he’s not hungry and then eats five cheeseburgers and three orders of sweet potato fries and Natasha just picks at her sushi and smiles at him and Steve doesn’t know whether to yell at her or hug her.

Then Natasha says, “They have cake. Your boy just singlehandedly saved the Earth from invasion. I think that warrants cake, don’t you?” and he balls up his napkin and throws it at her because now? Now she’s just messing.

She laughs, and dodges the napkin easily.

When they reach the hospital floor, it’s to find Fury sitting next to Bucky’s bed like an anxious relative. He smiles at Steve, small and tight, as Steve comes into the room.

Bucky’s pale, and his forearms are swathed in bandages. Fewer IVs than Steve expects lead from his body. His eyes are closed, those long dark lashes fanned out over too-sharp cheekbones.

“We can’t do anything for him,” Fury says quietly. “Other than make him comfortable and hope he heals.” The spy chief sighs, and rubs a hand over his face. His knuckles are ashy. “His body rejects all drugs, including painkillers. The Kree made him poison-proof.”

“He’s still in his armour,” Steve frowns, looking at the mass of Bucky’s body under the thin hospital blankets. “Couldn’t you get it off?”

Fury says nothing, but plucks at the edge of the blanket covering Bucky’s left side, lifting it slightly. Steve suppresses a gasp: the armour plates near his ruined mechanical arm are melting, turning to a sort of quicksliver, and weaving themselves into a new arm. Fury lets go of the blanket and it settles again, though Steve is now hyper aware of the small shifts under the blanket of the armour plates all over Bucky’s body as they move to repair the damaged area. “Believe me, I wish I knew how any of him worked,” Fury says, gesturing at Bucky’s form. “The technology is so far beyond us it might as well be magic.”

Steve nods, and settles into the armchair on the other side of Bucky’s bed from Fury. Natasha settles on a bench near the window, fishing a set of knitting needles and some black fuzzy yarn out of her handbag. “What do you know about him?” Steve asks.

Fury talks, softly. To himself, to the room, to Steve. “The Ghost Warriors were scouts, skirmishers.   
If you were their target, by the time you managed to see them, you were already dying. Sometimes you wouldn’t even see them then. He led their best squad. Until one day his programming slipped enough for him to remember his family. Crash-landed his ship next to Devils Tower two years ago. They’d gotten him as a child in—“

“—1972,” Steve says. “I know.”

“We took him in,” Fury continues. “Any being that crashes their spaceship on US soil, that’s pretty much our business. One we realised who and what he was, well… it was like playing a long con. The Kree might not invade if they knew we had him. And he’s far from the only alien in New York. Someone would recognise that arm as Kree military build. So he agreed to stay in training, and stay under cover—“

“He was sleeping on a pile of rags like a stray dog,” Steve growls.

“It was his choice,” Fury counters. “He got overwhelmed easily at first. He couldn’t go in and order a coffee at Starbucks. The number of decisions required sent him into a tailspin. We had to give him something that he was familiar with, a training framework, and let him gradually push the boundaries of it as—“

Steve becomes aware that a heavily-bandaged hand is tapping his, and he lowers his gaze from Fury to see two slivers of moonlight peering at him.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Bucky mumbles.

“Buck! You idiot!” Steve says. “What were you thinking, fighting someone made of plasma with your bare hands?!”

Bucky just grins up at him, sleep-rumpled and messy. “You mean what you said out there on the Mall?” He slurs.

Steve’s heart skips a beat. “Every goddamn word, Buck,” he says.

Bucky gives him a smile as dazzling as it is sleepy. “Then I’m your idiot.” His bandaged hand taps Steve’s again, three times.

Steve grabs that hand, and presses it to his lips, feeling the heat of healing flesh through the bandages.

“Ow,” mumbles Bucky.

Steve lets go of his hand. “Hey, can I have a bed delivered to your place?” he asks.

Bucky groans. “Fine, if it’ll make you shut up about my nest. They never let us have blankets… ‘s all I wanted. A bunch of blankets, and lots of space. No room on a spaceship,” he says, his eyes fluttering shut again. Soon, the gentle whuffles of sleep fill the air.

Steve presses a gentle, chaste kiss to Bucky’s forehead, and follows Fury and Natasha out of the room.

* * *

Bucky is cleared to go home on a Tuesday. When Steve comes to get him, he’s surprised to find Natasha sitting with Bucky, and Bucky himself wearing a fuzzy black mohair sweater with a Black Widow emblem on it, over a pair of black sweatpants. He looks so cozy, soft over hard, Steve has to consciously stop himself from putting his hands all over Bucky’s once again pristine, perfect body.

Instead, he raises an eyebrow at Natasha.

“Us child warriors have to stick together,” Natasha says. She has knitting needles again, this time with a fluffy purple yarn wound around them.

Steve points to the needles, and then Bucky’s sweater, and looks inquiringly at Natasha.

Natasha sighs, and clacks the knitting needles together. “My deprogrammer says that building home-made surveillance devices is not an acceptable hobby. I countered with the need for more women in STEM. He suggested knitting.”

“How’s it going?” Steve says.

Natasha thumbs the end of one of her knitting needles.The needle detaches, shoots across the room, and embeds into the drywall near the door. “I can see the point,” she drawls.

“It’s a great sweater,” Bucky says. “Kind of like wearing a hug.”

Natasha actually full-on blushes. “Aw. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she croons.

Steve takes Bucky’s arm, makes the I’m-watching-you gesture at Natasha, who cackles, and then heads to the roof to board a quinjet to New York.

* * *

They walk into Cage’s gym at 5pm, just as the man himself is packing up to go home for the day. He grins when he sees Bucky, and they’re hugging a moment later.

“We did it,” Bucky whispers, into his coach’s neck.

“No, you did it,” Cage says, pushing Bucky away and looking him right in the eye. The Cage glances over at Steve, and back to Bucky.

“You gonna keep fighting, kid?” Cage asks, and Steve isn’t sure whether Cage is talking about boxing, or defending the planet. But he sees the hesitation in Bucky’s eyes, and cuts off whatever Cage is going to say next with, “You don’t have to, Buck.”

Bucky smiles up at him. “Neither do you.”

Steve opens his mouth, shuts it again, opens it, and coughs out a “Well…”. His cheeks redden as he hears Cage chuckle.

“‘M not gonna stop,” Bucky says. “I like fighting.” He gives Cage a playful shove. “Besides, I still need to make Cain Marko eat canvas.”

Cage shakes his head. “Out of your weight class, son.”

Bucky blinks his big grey eyes at Cage and Steve has to remind himself that just a week ago, Bucky had saved the whole damn planet. “I could bulk up?” Bucky says, his voice tentative. Then he turns those puppy-dog eyes on Steve, and both Steve’s heart and groin light up. “You could help. Lift with me?”

Steve doesn’t say anything for almost a whole minute, while a cascade of super-inappropriate images of Bucky, hot and sweaty and lifting ridiculous amounts of iron, thunder through his mind. In the end, he just raises an index finger, turns, and walks upstairs, the sound of Cage’s laughter chasing at his heels.

  
* * *

The bed that Steve ordered had arrived, and someone — Cage, Steve guesses — has put it together. It’s a Cali King on a platform, and on top of it are a ton of new, extra-soft blankets in lots of pastel colours that Steve also bought. He doesn’t know much about the Kree but he figures that colours with names like “pale rose” and “periwinkle” and “delicate mint” probably weren’t in their vocabulary.

He feels Bucky behind him, the warmth of his body suggesting close proximity, even though he hadn’t heard Bucky approach. Ghost Warrior, Steve thinks. He turns, and Bucky is just staring past him at the bed. He points to it, and then to himself, beyond words.

“Yeah,” Steve nods, breathless himself. “All for you. Gotta make up for all the years of the Kree not giving you nice things.”

Bucky smiles, pulling Natasha’s fuzzy sweater over his head, and then shoving his sweatpants down his hips. He’s not wearing underwear. Steve’s brain judders to a halt as smooth expanses of golden flesh are revealed, stretched tight over more muscle than it would seem possible under his clothes. And then, as Bucky flops onto the new bed and rolls over onto his back—

“Jeez, Buck, did the Kree augment everything?!” Steve says, staring at the absolute firehose between Bucky’s legs.

Bucky blushes the prettiest shade of pink and curls in on himself, rolling onto his side. He smushes his face into a blanket that Steve remembers was called Spring Lilac on the website, and mumbles, “It’s the Kree, Steve, they don’t do sex. I’m lucky they didn’t cut it off.” Then he looks up at Steve, biting his lip uncertainly. “I’m uh… I’m a virgin.”

Steve feels himself blushing too, pink heat roaring across his cheeks and down his chest. “W-what do you want to do about that,” he manages to stutter, unable to tear his eyes off Bucky, the gleam of metal and the shift of bulky muscle.

“Everything,” whispers Bucky.

Steve yanks off his own tee and sweatshirt so fast he thinks he hears them rip but at this point he just doesn’t care. Then he’s struggling out of his jeans and his underwear and his socks and it’s all incredibly ungraceful and awkward but finally he’s naked but for his shield harness, his cock heavy and hard between his legs.

And then… they just look at each other. Steve feels like they’re on a precipice, and over the edge lies only warmth and light and comfort, but it feels right to take a moment and acknowledge that they’re crossing into a different country, moving beyond the maps and frontiers their friendship has established so far.

Bucky pushes himself up a few moments later and sits forwards, a look of happy wonder on his face. “I don’t know where to begin, Steve. There’s so much of you.”

So they begin small. Steve takes Bucky’s hands in his. He kisses the scarred knuckles of Bucky’s flesh hand, and the clever plates of his metal hand. Then he turns them over and looks at the palms, tracing a line here, a seam there with his thumbs. “These hands saved the planet,” Steve says, and it feels to him as if his love for the shy boxer is a palpable glow, an aura Bucky must be able to see, it’s pouring out of him so strongly.

But Bucky just blushes. “Once,” he says. Then he brings Steve’s hands to his lips and kisses them in return. “Yours…” He shakes his head again. “I promised myself if I survived, I’d do all sorts of things to you, and… now that I’m here, I just want to take it slow.”

“I’m glad you left this on, though,” Bucky says, tracing a metal finger down the edge of Steve’s shield harness, over his pec. Steve wants to arch into it, like a cat. He swallows the moan that threatens to escape his throat.

“I liked when you, uh… when you picked me up by it,” Steve whispers, embarrassed. He’s never vocalised his wants, to anyone. He feels like he could tell Bucky anything, and it would be okay, but the act of putting his sexual desires into speech is still terrifying. “I like when you push me around,” he says, and isn’t that a trip? A lifetime fighting bullies, and it turns out what really gets him going is fantasising about Bucky pushing him down and having his way with him. But, some last, rational part of Steve’s brain said, Bucky couldn’t be a bully if he tried. Bucky was the kindest person Steve had ever met. And the fact that he could also push Steve down and hold him where he wanted him? Yeah.

Steve looks up. Bucky’s cheeks are red with nerves and arousal as he looks up at Steve from where he sits on the edge of the bed. His nipples, a dark tan compared to Steve’s shell pink, are hard.

Steve traces a hand down that magnificent chest, letting his fingers brush over the stiff points of Bucky’s nipples. Then he moves his hand southwards, to the dark trail of hair that grows at the base of Bucky’s abs. “Can I?”

Bucky nods, his pale eyes wide, his pupils blown with lust.

Steve pulls Bucky to his feet and then wraps his hand around Bucky’s dick. He’s thick, and hot in Steve’s hand, and Steve can feel the twitch of muscle under silk as Bucky reacts to the pressure. Steve moves closer as Bucky’s head falls back, exposing the strong column of his neck. Steve tucks his own nose into it, into the soft hair that grows there, as he fits his body against Bucky’s. They’re almost the same height; Bucky’s maybe a tiny bit shorter, but broader.

Steve widens his grip and catches his own cock, pressing it against Bucky’s as he begins stroking both of them off. Bucky’s face is like the face of an angel, dark lashes fanning over his cheeks, wet lips, and pink high on his cheekbones as his breath turns husky with arousal. Steve feels Bucky’s metal hand spread across his ass, possessive, pulling Steve impossibly closer. That’s when Steve can no longer bury the moan in his throat so he fits his lips against Bucky’s and kisses him, drowning in the wet heat of his mouth, the hardness of his body, as his own hips start jerking, chasing the orgasm that’s unspooling in him far more quickly than he expected. He comes, and Bucky comes a moment later, metal fingers digging into the soft curve of Steve’s ass, the kiss turning into something closer to a bite. Steve feels hazy from orgasm, but absolutely not done, it’s not satisfied him, not with Bucky’s body against his, Bucky’s lips against his ear.

“I want to have sex with you,” Bucky whispers to him. “I want to…” That metal hand on Steve’s ass curves around, dipping into the cleft between his cheeks, tentatively exploring. Another frontier. Steve moans, pressing back into Bucky’s fingers, trying to get them closer to his hole. He suddenly needs those fingers on him, in him, like he’s never needed anything else. “I want that,” he says. He realises he’s babbling but he can’t stop, it all just pours out of him, a torrent of filth. “I want you to bend me over the bed and open me up with your metal hand, and then I want you to grab me by my shield harness and rail me without mercy until I can’t say my own name.”

Steve can already feel Bucky hardening against his thigh. Bucky nuzzles him, those plush lips moving to claim his again in a kiss. “God, Steve, yes.” Then those lips pull into a smile, and Steve feels impossibly light, like it’s okay, like everything he wants is permitted. “Gotta do some research first,” Bucky says. “Can I take you out, on a date? I might be a shit date though, sometimes human stuff confuses me, too many choices that don’t involve punching…”

A laugh bursts out of Steve. There were a lot of things he never expected about being in love. Well, he never expected to be the object of love in the first place, so all of this was uncharted territory, not even explored in his imagination. But neither the hot fire of his lust for Bucky, or the sweetness, the laughter, was anything he had foreseen. “Yeah, I know what you mean. And yes, I’d love to go out on a date.”

Bucky nudges him with his jaw, like a cat seeking attention. “I’ll get you there. To the, uh, restaurant. Then you have to help me through it.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he realises it’s enough. That they don’t have to do everything at once. They have their whole entire lives to explore each other. They have all the time in the world. He wriggles out of the chest harness, Bucky’s eyes on him filled with hunger, and lets it drop to the ground. Then he gets onto the big new bed and reaches out his hand, beckoning Bucky to join him. “Shall we get some sleep? Don’t want to tire you out on your first day out of hospital.”

Bucky pouts at him. “The Ghost Squadron’s motto was Always Ready,” he mumbles.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Steve says, tossing back a blanket (Fresh Cranberry, if he recalls correctly).

Bucky crawls in beside him, and Steve can’t take his eyes off the shift of muscle under his skin as he settles down. He’s out not ten minutes later, snoring softly into his pillow.

Steve curls around him, marvelling at how cool Bucky’s body is compared to the constant heat of his own. He wants to watch Bucky, has every intention of just staring at him for a while, but sleep steals over him as well, silent and heavy.

The first sunlight of morning stretches in dusty beams across the warehouse space when Steve wakes to gentle hands on his sides, and the press of lips to his forehead. He opens his eyes to Bucky’s smile, and his first act of the morning is to kiss his boyfriend, morning breath and all.

They make out lazily in bed, rutting against each other, as the morning sun’s rays shift across the floor from rose to yellow to the white of day, and then Steve gets them bagels and coffee, and then there’s nothing to do but part. Bucky needs a shower. Steve needs that and a change of clothes, and to check in with the Avengers. They make plans for that night, for the date — a nice local restaurant Bucky knows because the owner’s from one of the old Hells Kitchen Irish mob families, long out of the crime business but still big on boxing. And then they kiss goodbye.

Steve has to drag himself out of there, forcing himself not to look back, like Orpheus, lest all of this love and warmth vanish, lest the world realise he didn’t deserve it, that it was too good for the likes of him.

The date doesn’t happen, because an AIM experiment to grow kaiju does, and the Avengers spend all afternoon and most of the night battling giant lizards in Lake Erie. Steve may punch the lizards a little harder than necessary. He knows this isn’t their fault, but it sure feels like it. The AIM scientists take one look at the expression on his face and drop their control modules, surrendering immediately.

By the time they get back and showered and debriefed, it’s early evening the following night, and Steve texts Luke Cage, asking him if Bucky’s at the gym. Cage texts back that he thinks Bucky’s gone out for a drink, and the name of a bar.

Steve recognises it. It’s the place Sam and Clint had taken him for Enforced Socialization all those weeks ago, when he’d first laid eyes on Bucky. Or, more accurately, first been laid out by Bucky.

He grabs his jacket and heads for the elevators. Sam clocks him leaving and says, “Where are you going, Cap?”

Steve grins. “To a bar. To socialise.”

“By yourself? Oooh, get you,” Sam smiles back.

“Well, not completely by myself. I’m meeting someone,” Steve says. He can’t keep the happiness off his face, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

“Use protection,” Tony shouts. “Also, I want schematics for that metal arm, can you do some sort of honeypot thing to get them for me?”

Steve’s about to answer, when Natasha’s derisive snort answers for him.

“What she said,” Steve quips, ducking into the elevators. Then, to the ceiling: “Save me, Jarvis.”

Jarvis shuts the doors and whisks him down to street level. It’s a swift crosstown walk to Hells Kitchen. Rockefeller Center is, as always, a crowded mess on a Friday night but Steve is a born and bred New Yorker and dodges between sidewalk and street, making good time. The craft beer bar where Bucky hangs out is crowded, and Steve can’t see him immediately on going in, but Steve can feel him. Somehow he knows Bucky is here.

And then someone pushes away from the bar and Steve’s soul just about leaves his body. Bucky’s shaved, and had his hair cut — still long on top, but shorter at the back and sides, showing off those mesmerising eyes and cheekbones — and he’s wearing clothes that actually fit him. Of course, the corner of Steve’s rational brain supplies: he no longer needs to hide himself. But Bucky’s in a sky-blue t-shirt stretched tight over his chest and shoulders and it warms up the colour of his eyes and brings out the gold in his skin and Steve needs to breathe and also not get a hard-on in the middle of a crowded bar.

Bucky’s face breaks into a smile like sunshine as he sees Steve. He glances back at the bartender and motions for a second beer, then he’s up in Steve’s space, winding his arms around Steve’s neck.

But then Bucky pauses, uncertain. “Is this okay?” He says. “In public?”

“Buck,” Steve says, closing the distance between them for a kiss, “I told the whole planet and a bunch of alien invaders that I love you, on the Mall in Washington DC, I think the cat’s out of the bag.”

Bucky’s grin grows wider and then Steve kisses him in front of everyone, and it’s wonderful. “Can I take my best guy to dinner now, to make up for standing him up last night?”

Bucky kisses him again, then glares. “Saying I’m your best guy presupposes the existence of other guys. Who are these guys. I will fight them.”

Steve laughs then, bright and happy, and pulls Bucky towards him, hugging him, just needing to feel his body against him. “I love you,” Steve says. “I really do.”

“Good,” Bucky says. “Because I love you too.”

“Ugh, this is turning into a fucking fairy bar,” says a voice behind them.

Steve turns, glaring. A mountain of a guy is in the door, disgust written across his ugly features. He can feel Bucky sigh, exasperated, next to him. “What did you say?” Steve grits out.

“Steve,” Bucky says.

“No, Buck, lemme—“

“STEVE,” Bucky growls, pinching his bicep to refocus his attention.

“What.”

“Duck.”

It takes Steve a split second to process what Bucky’s asking, but he drops down just in time for Bucky’s right cross to whistle an inch over his head, towards the man-mountain’s jaw.

The big guy sees it coming and dodges it… directly into the uppercut of Bucky’s metal arm. Steve shouldn’t be as satisfied by the crunch of breaking jaw that he hears, but sue him, he is.

Then the man-mountain’s two friends try to jump Steve and it’s _on_.

* * *

Tony hears the elevator doors ding and looks up from where he’s fiddling with engineering plans on the common room sofa.

The doors open, disgorging Spangles and his cyborg alien Last Starfighter boyfriend. Spangles has a black eye and cyborg boo has bloody knuckles and a split cheekbone and they’re toting three boxes of pizza.

“Dare I ask?” Tony says.

Cap grins at him, his teeth bloody. “We had our first date.”

Cyborg boo looks at Steve, smiling softly, and Steve looks back and practically GLOWS at him, and Tony cringes with embarrassment at all the feelings that are happening in front of him, God, when did Cap start emoting, it’s like everything Tony knows about the world is wrong. “You.. had fun?” Tony squeaks, trying to avert his gaze.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, lacing metal fingers together with Steve’s. “It was _perfect_.”

Then, since Tony is so busy trying not to look at Spangles’ face, he notices something odd under Steve’s shirt. “Steve, are you wearing your shield harness?”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve says, looking far too smug for a man trying to be ready for alien attack, or something.

Tony blushes and puts his hands over his face. He’s never coming into the common room again. This was all a mistake. “It’s a sex thing, isn’t it.”

There’s no response, other than a cackle of laughter from cyborg boo, the slam of a door, and the sound of someone being thrown bodily onto a bed.

Tony sighs, and stares at the ceiling. “Jarvis,” he whines. “It’s not fair. I’m the pervert on the team. It’s me.”

”Alas, sir,” comes the voice from the ceiling. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry this took so long to finish! The ending escaped me for a long time — originally it was just “and they bang”, but that felt... wrong, for these two. Last night, it finally worked itself out. Here you go.
> 
> This probably isn’t as explicit as some of you would like. If you want more porn, might I suggest my fic “Demonique”? It’s FILTHY.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I still have to finish Fallen Angels and Friends With The Monster. Yes, I am quoting a Smiths song for a fic title in the year of our lord 2018.


End file.
